


Make that Commando Howl

by Arya_Greenleaf



Series: 30 Day OTP Challenge [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Clothed Sex, First Time, Frottage, M/M, Masturbation, Naked Cuddling, One Shot Collection, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, naked kissing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-05 10:24:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1815163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Third in my 30 Day OTP Challenge series. I so (not) sorry for the title of this thing. I'll add tags as they become appropriate. The ficlets/drabbles contained herein will range from Pre-Serum Steve/Bucky to Post-CATWS Steve/Bucky. Each "chapter" will be a stand-alone story unless otherwise specified.</p><p>UPDATE: See first "chapter" for challenge summaries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Table of Contents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Added 04 October 2014. NOT AN UPDATE.
> 
> Evidently I need a summary! Thanks, tumblr ;) Saw that post. 
> 
> Below will be a summary/snippet from each chapter. I'll update this page whenever I update the series! I can't expect people to tolerate 30 separate chapter summaries in that little box on the search results or dashboard. Ugh. Especially on mobile.

**KEY:**

Pre-Serum: Skinny Steve and Bucky, pre-War.

Post-Serum: Steve and Bucky during the War.

Post-CATWS: What it says on the tin! Steve and Bucky after the events of Cap 2.

Recovery: Bucky regaining or interpreting memories/reclaiming autonomy.

 

* * *

 

[[Challenge 1: Naked Cuddling][Pre-Serum]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1815163/chapters/3896473)

  * When the world isn't a pleasant place to be, Bucky and Steve push the beds together. And when the beds are pushed together, the world is somehow pleasant.



[[Challenge 2: Naked Kissing][Post-CATWS/Recovery]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1815163/chapters/3971569)

  * Bucky knows things. He remembers things. Like pushing the beds together. He just isn't sure how the sequence falls into place.



[[Challenge 3: First Time][Pre-Serum/Post-Serum/Post-CATWS]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1815163/chapters/4056531)

  * Not every first time is the literal one. Sometimes it's the first reconnection. Sometimes its the first crack in the wall.



[[Challenge 4: Masturbation][Pre-Serum]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1815163/chapters/4967595)

  * Steve was a beautiful thing to behold when he let himself unravel. Bucky doesn't even mind if his shirt gets a little wet in the process.



[[Challenge 5: Oral Sex][Post-Serum]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1815163/chapters/5188283)

  * Sometimes Bucky is brooding. Sometimes he's distant. Sometimes it's like nothing ever happened. This time, he's an insatiable flirt.



[[Challenge 6: Clothed Getting-Off][Pre-Serum/Post-Serum]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1815163/chapters/5335895)

  * Everyone thinks Steve is such a good boy. No one believes he's the same person who picks fights and pushes Bucky's buttons. So really, when Bucky tries to push Steve's, he shouldn't be surprised when it backfires.




	2. Challenge One: Cuddling Naked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky are sort of in an established but not-publicly acknowledged relationship in this piece.
> 
> Also, look out for hilariously outdated slang because I couldn't resist.

“You ah’ight over there?” Steve was jolted out of his reverie by Bucky’s large, rough hand on his shoulder. His friend’s shirt was soaked through with perspiration from working all day in the beating sun on the dock. He hated that Bucky worked so hard. Hated it. But they needed his pay to make rent.

Steve had only managed to sell a few illustrations to the advertising company that had taken him on as a freelancer. The grocers’ son was coming home from spending the summer with relatives up in Niagara, so his job at the market was in jeopardy. Early that morning, he had found every last bit of change in the apartment from under the sofa and in his pockets. He’d walked—slowly—across the bridge and taken the train across Manhattan to West 42nd. He’d brought all of his best work with him and had refused to leave the office until Mr. Goodman agreed to see him.

In the end, he’d been praised for his talent but sent away after being told that Timely wasn’t looking for any new artists at the moment, and wasn’t he kind of young, was he sure that was what he wanted to do with his life? Yes, he was _damned_ sure. Steve had sat himself down against the outside of the building for a good five minutes, flopping his portfolio folder against his knees in frustration until an officer came and told him to move along. He hadn’t had any change left to get the train back across town. It had taken him the better part of the rest of the day, he was sure he’d lost at least three pounds from the effort, his best shirt was crusty with the salt from his now-dry sweat, but he’d managed the walk back across Manhattan, over the bridge, and down to the dock that Bucky was working at. He’d been tempted to drop the folder over the side of the bridge on his way but the thought of Bucky’s disappointed face when he inevitably found out Steve’s folly had made him too sick to go through with it.

“Ya sure? Steve you’re white as a sheet, and that’s sayin’ a lot for you, bud.”

“I’m fine, Buck.” He gestured with his chin toward the men working to lift and move crates from one area to the other for inspection. “Finish. I’ll wait for you.” He wasn’t entirely sure he had the strength to move, anyway. He was starved. Hadn’t eaten all day, his nerves and excitement over going to see Goodman had made his ulcers act up. The sting of rejection had only made his stomach burn worse. His flat feet were on fire from his exertion, which, in hindsight, had been pretty damned foolish. How he’d made it there and back without a whopper of an asthma attack was beyond his scope of comprehension, but his fluttering heart was enough to dull the small internal celebration.

Steve perched himself atop a pile of empty crates and watched as the sky began to change color with the coming sunset and the men on the dock started to work faster to be finished before darkness settled.

A big brutish thing came lumbering up the cobbled walkway from the loading area. “You! I’m talkin’ ta you!”

Steve blinked, realizing that he-man was truly speaking to him. “Yes?”

“What are you doing down here, ya feckin’ fairy?”

Steve couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t the first time he’d been called names. Between his size and his health problems, he’d been teased his whole life. People were always whispering that there must be something _off_ with that Rogers boy, something up with his head. Comments like this were newer, though. Everyone was afraid of being pulled into the war. Men needed to be men and Steve was nothing like them. He let them roll off his back all the same. In the long run, none of it mattered. “Excuse me?” Steve slid down off the crates and balanced his portfolio carefully on top of them.

“You heard me. Ya. Feckin’. Fairy.” Steve was tempted to point out the fact that he hadn’t realized he was being spoken to at first, he was deaf _thankyouverymuch_. He lunged and Steve dodged, a move he’d been perfecting his whole life. The backhand that was meant for his face knocked the portfolio down and sent pages and sheets of cardstock scattering across the cobblestones.

“No!” He slipped past him, under his arm, and made a grab for his work only to be grabbed by his collar. “Shit!”

“Where ya think yer goin’?” Steve twisted in his grasp and raked his short nails across the brute’s face. He growled in disgust and let go.

“Hey!” Bucky was sprinting up the path, his lunch tin forgotten on the ground, rolling away. “ _Hey_!” He grabbed the brute’s shoulder, making him turn around while Steve regained his footing. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He grunted and swung and Bucky used his momentum against him to send him sprawling into the stack of crates. “Go the fuck home!”

Bucky jogged up to Steve where he was scrambling after his artwork before it moved on the breeze into the puddles closer to the water and helped him pick things up and carefully tuck them back into the portfolio. “Thanks.” They walked back up the path, picking Bucky’s lunch tin up as they went. “What he heck was his problem?”

Bucky shook his head. “Got laid off. Caught drinkin’ on the job. Wife is gonna murdah ‘im.” He slung an arm around Steve. “No excuse for pickin’ on someone mindin’ their own business, though.” They walked in silence for a few blocks. “Ya hungry? I’m sta’vin’. Thought you were gonna’ bring me somthin’ to eat ta’day.” Steve waited while Bucky ordered them sandwiches in the deli they stopped at.

“No, today I went to Timely.” He took the sandwich he was offered. Bucky paused, mouth open, about to bite into his own.

“Oh gawd. I’m sorry, I forgot that was today.” He dropped his arms slightly and looked Steve over. “You wore ya best shirt and everything.” Steve nodded and started walking, just wanting to get home and get his shoes off. Maybe dunk them in a pot of cold water for a few hours. “How did it go? Did they hire ya? They’re fuckin’ crazy if they didn’t.”

Steve adjusted the portfolio under his arm. “No.”

“ _What_?”

“No. They didn’t hire me.” Steve explained the gist of what had transpired. He sighed heavily as they waited to cross the street. “I just…I just wanted to…I wanted to do something with my life. I don’t want to be stuck taking whatever odd jobs the grocer will give me. No one wants to fuckin’ hire me. No one thinks I can do anything. Everyone thinks there’s something _wrong_ with me.” Bucky squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “I wanted…I wanted to work on Human Torch! And Namor! And…and…I just wanted to _earn_ something for doing something I’m _good_ at. Something I can actually _do_ with no problems.”

They continued on in silence. Steve didn’t want to talk about it anyway. He just wanted to get home and see if he could salvage his shirt or if it was completely ruined.

“Ya know,” Bucky said quietly as he crumpled the wax paper that had covered his sandwich. “They never said there was something wrong or that ya couldn’t do it. They said ya had _talent_.”

“It’s not enough.”

Bucky furrowed his bow and tugged Steve toward the shadows between buildings in the steadily settling twilight, “It’s enough for me.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to Steve’s forehead. “Should we push the beds together tonight?”

“Bucky!” Steve hissed through gritted teeth. “Don’t do that.”

Bucky laughed his caviler laugh and stepped back out onto the sidewalk, “C’mon. Let’s get home before it get too dark.”

Bucky had always seemed to have it so easily. School came so easy to him when they were kids. He could hear a thing or see it once or twice and have it down. He poured through books as quickly as he ran the makeshift bases in a game of stickball. Steve missed a lot. He had to study twice as hard to keep his grades up because he was stuck at home because of one or more of his seemingly endless list of illnesses. His vision was too poor to really make out what was on the blackboard and the teachers seemed to always stick him in the back of the class. He was constantly having to clarify what had been said, the distance serving to muffle their lectures with his bum hearing.

Bucky had always found himself in easy, tight friendships. Everyone on their block loved him. Most people in his class adored him. The guys all wanted to be him and the girls all swooned over him. Steve wasn’t like that. He was friendly, he thought he was pretty nice, but he was just so painfully awkward. He was afraid to get too close to anyone. It still surprised him every day how close he was with Bucky.

He’d developed a reputation for being a ladies’ man from the moment it was acceptable to be one. He always had a date. He always had a dame on his arm. Steve…well Steve had realized from the get-go that he had no interest in dames. He had no interest in anyone really. It was all just too overwhelming. To always be expected to see and hear everything clearly. To keep someone interested. To keep up at a dance. To keep up walking around the fair. To keep up at all. It made his lungs feel tight to even think about it.

But he’d begun to notice more and more often that Bucky was canceling dates, not only not bothering to ask if the girl had a friend but canceling altogether. He stayed home on Friday nights instead of swinging out to the clubs and coming home at dawn. That was one thing that Steve found himself actually enjoying when Bucky dragged him out for a double that would inevitably end poorly: He loved to watch Bucky dance. He was so free. So happy. So completely at ease. He was the embodiment of everything Steve wanted to be and never felt. He could swing. He could polka. He could sweep a dame around the floor like the whole world depended on it. Steve would never be able to do that. For one, he’d pass out long before the first stanza of a song was over if he even attempted to dance like that. Second, he could never find the right partner.

But on the Friday nights that Bucky had begun to spend at home, Steve also noticed him taking a much more firm interest in the things that Steve preferred to do over the travesty of dancing. He began to look at Steve’s artwork with a more critical eye. He asked more questions. He made suggestions. He pointed out gently when colors or lines just didn’t quite jive, knowing that Steve wouldn’t have noticed.

It was on a Friday night at home the first time Bucky had dared lay his lips against Steve’s temple as he leaned over the table they referred to as his “studio.” The table was placed near the only window in the room, in a spot where he could optimize on the natural light that it offered during the day. Bucky’s idea, of course. It was on a Friday night at home the first time that Steve realized that all of Bucky’s cancellations and attentions were really Bucky choosing _him_.

“Dames can be a lot of fun, Steve.” He had said. “But I just can't care for one of them the way I care about you. It’s always been you.”

Steve was still amazed every day when he woke up and remembered that Friday night at home. When he woke up and it hadn’t been a dream after all.

But none of it stopped the expectations of everyone around him. When are you going to settle down, James? When are you going to snatch up a wife? Have kids? Get a place of your own? No one asked Steve those questions. No one asked Steve those questions because there was something _off_ about that Rogers kid. But there was nothing _off_ about Barnes.

So they pushed their narrow beds together in the small space of the tiny bedroom of their hard-won two-room apartment and blocked out the world for a few hours on a Friday night at home. And with his body tensed so as to not fall quite into the cleft between the thin mattresses, Steve found he _could_ be interested in someone who was willing to take the time.

They’d never _done_ anything. Nothing more than holding each other as they whispered in the darkness late into the night. Nothing more than pressing lip to lip and lip to skin. Nothing more than the lasting marks and little bits across Steve’s chest and back. Nothing more than lying skin to skin as one or the other shook or sobbed or froze or burned with fever. And “let’s push the beds together” became code for so much more. I need you. I care for you. I want you.

But Steve didn’t want to push the beds together. Not that night. He was too angry. Too insulted. He didn’t want to taint the ritual with his sour mood.

So he left Bucky to wash up in the shared bathroom in the hall while he went inside to strip off his clothes and see if they were salvageable. He couldn’t afford a new shirt just then. It wasn’t in the budget. The slightly off-white was already beginning to take on a more dingy, yellowed hue. He didn’t have the energy or the patience to deal with it before bed. He slid the window open and pegged his shirt and trousers to the line, hoping the clean night air would help.

He was standing in his shorts, staring aimlessly down at the damaged artwork now spread out on the studio, when Bucky came in shirtless and damp. “C’mon, punk.” He wrapped his arms around Steve’s waist and laid a kiss against his shoulder. “Let’s go to bed.”

“The _neighbors_ , ya jerk.” He quickly moved to turn off the light and close the window.

Bucky’s finger hooked into the waist of Steve’s shorts. “I’m not takin’ no for an answer. We’re pushin’ the beds ta’gether.” Steve resisted and Bucky seized him around the waist, practically carrying Steve under his solid arm.

Steve let his body hang. “This is so undignified.”

Bucky snorted out a laugh and plunked him down on his bed before scooting it across the room to sit flush with its twin. Steve was determined to continue his sullen attitude as he folded his arms and watched out of the corner of his eye as Bucky opened the window to let some of the stuffy heat of the day out of the room and then stripped out of his trousers, hanging them and the shirt that had been draped over one shoulder across the chair in the corner. He peeled his own shorts away from his skin and plunked down, making the mattress dip under his weight. “C’mon.”

Steve sighed and stood and shimmied out of his shorts before allowing Bucky to pull him onto the bed and into his arms. "Going over to Timely was such a huge boner."

There was silence and peace in that bed and in those arms. “Timely can suck a cock, Steve.” It was Steve’s turn to laugh. “They’re crazy for not taking you. They don’t know what they’ve lost.” Bucky’s speech lost all of its roughness in those quiet moments in the dark when they were skin to skin with the beds pushed together.

Steve pressed his face to Bucky’s chest, feeling the steady beat of Bucky’s heart, so unlike his own, as Bucky rubbed comforting circles over his back. He paid special attention to the _just_ noticeable curve, seeming to know intuitively that the deformity must be causing Steve pain after having been through so much physically in one day. Steve pressed a leg between Bucky’s, anchoring their bodies together. He worried at the ridges of hard muscle in Bucky’s shoulders and back, surely sore and tight after a long day of hard work, probing with his fingers and trying to find knots.

It was too hot for this. To be pressed together this way with the hot summer air blowing in the window and over their bodies.

Bucky’s hands, big and rough from labor, smoothed over Steve’s back and his sharp hips and settled around his backside. Bucky pulled him close, mouthed at the junction between jaw and ear, moved his legs, kneaded what little flesh Steve had to knead.

“Steve.” He breathed.

“No, Buck.” He couldn’t. He couldn’t ruin Bucky that way. Not when he had so much that was expected of him. Not when he could hope for so much more.

“Okay.” It broke his heart every time. The quiet resolution. The care. The love.

So they lay in each other’s arms. Chest to chest. Skin to skin. Legs in a tangle. The hot air doing nothing to cool overworked bodies.

“Buck? You awake?” His breathing had evened out and his body had begun to go slack.

“Yeah.”

“What…what was that letter you got yesterday? The one you hid under the mattress.”

“It was nothin’, punk. Mind ya business.”

“Jerk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, just as a point of reference, "Timely Publications" and it's division "Timely Comics" was the original name for Marvel when it was established by Martin Goodman in the late 1930s. Their first publication was dated October 1939. The "Human Torch" Steve refers to is Carl Burgos' android character, Jim Hammond, not to be confused with Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four. Because that's what you wanted from a Skinny Steve/Bucky fic, right? Some publication history?
> 
> The comment about there being something "off" about Steve is not a comment on his sexuality but a comment about how people thought of his health issues in the early 20th century. A lot of problems, including asthma, were thought to be psychological issues than manifested physically. So essentially, people would have thought of Steve as being mentally unstable or underdeveloped.
> 
> The letter Steve asks about is Bucky's order to report for induction, something he would have received in the mail after registering for the draft as required by law and then receiving a 1-A classification from their local Selective Service HQ after submitting to exam and having his employment and any dependencies reviewed. We know from the serial number he repeats when Steve rescues him from HYDRA that he's been drafted.
> 
> "Boner" is slang for "mistake."
> 
> Same with the other two in the series so far, as I think will be the theme for all of the OTP challenges I post for this one, I kept this much more tame. Smut to follow, no worries.
> 
> As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback!


	3. Challenge Two: Kissing Naked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not necessarily a continuation of the first chapter, but this one does contain some heavy referencing at least.
> 
> Post-CATWS.

He was remembering things. Sometimes it was a fine thread that he had to struggle to hold onto, find that gentle balance that let him keep out without snapping it off and losing it. Sometimes it was an avalanche all at once. Sometimes it was slow and infuriating.

The things the Soldier did.  Those were usually the avalanches. Those memories made him sick. Made him hate himself. The worst was when they came during sleep, or just before. He’d find himself disoriented, searching and scraping at the back of his mind trying to remember what his mission was. Why was he in bed? In soft bedclothes. The Asset did not rest. The Asset did not indulge. The Asset was a tool. A weapon. A ghost. He’d creep through the house, listening to the sounds of sleep and looking in on the sleepers. A flash of blonde hair illuminated by the moonlight streaming in the window. _The man on the bridge._

“Bucky!” The man would croak as the Asset held him down, fingers wrapped about his neck. Without his knives or firearms, this was the simplest way, the least messy.

“Don’t call me that.” The Asset would hiss.

The man would grapple with him, trying to gain the upper hand. His face would turn red. His veins would stand out. His pulse would thunder and flutter under the Asset’s fingers. “Bucky! Remember.”

And when he did, he would be horrified. He would release the man and scramble away, shame burning his face. He would go to his room and pull off the soft bedclothes. He would strip the mattress down. The comforts of the human world were too much in those moments. There would be a woman sometimes. With red hair and eyes that held secrets and hands that felt too familiar and a voice that sounded like home.  “James?” She would call out quietly. “Are you alright?” He would press his forehead to the closed door and tell her yes, he was fine. He wasn’t, but it was what everyone wanted to hear.

There was a man who lived in the house. A man who could sprout wings and fly. And the man who could fly was always trying to get him to talk about things. There was always something edging in at the corners of his thoughts when he sat and talked with the man who could fly. Someone that he’d known. Not this man, but one like him. Another with an easy smile and a bright laugh and a kind heart. A man who had known pain and insult and had overcome it to be a great man. A man who spoke another language. A man who had a name like an angel. Could the other man fly too? He couldn’t remember.

But there were other times that he felt like himself, that he felt like the man that was sometimes called James and sometimes called Bucky and sometimes called Sergeant Barnes. Those were both the best and the worst. They filled him with joy and shame in turn. But he would hold onto them like a lifeline all the same.

“C’mon, Buck. Natasha’s meeting us at the mall.” The man had been nagging him for days about the threadbare state of his clothes. He’d gotten them along the way while he searched out those who had ripped him out of his own head and shoved something else inside; picked up from thrift shops that only charged a few dollars or were easy to steal from or unattended laundry lines. No matter how he’d gotten them, they were his. He’d chosen them. He had made the conscious decision to select them. They weren’t a suit made of leather and Kevlar. They weren’t heavy boots and belts and straps and holsters. They weren’t a muzzle and gloves and goggles. They were soft, worn-in denim and cotton. They were small buttons and short zippers. They were his.

But the man insisted that he needed more options. At least the woman would be there. She always tempered the man, reeled him in when he was overwhelming.

“Hello, James.” She had a warm smile on her face when she waved. The sun bounced brightly off of her red hair and flashed off the edges of her sunglasses. “I thought we could start small? Some shirts first.” He nodded and followed her. The man kept his distance, kept his hands to himself as if conscious that he had been overbearing.

It was easy at first. The man and the woman led him through the store, between rows and rows of shirts in every texture and color and pattern imaginable. The man became less tense, watching as he fingered the garments, deciding which he liked before he was boxed into a dressing room to try things on.

He became frustrated when they moved beyond casual clothing. He looked to the man and at the shirt in his hands, holding it up at the man’s shoulders. The crisp white linen felt familiar. The man smiled that infuriatingly lop-sided half smile that made something in him burn and want. “Little too small, Buck. Now, at least.”

“I thought you were smaller,” he mumbled as he shoved the shirt unceremoniously back onto the shelf.

When they’d selected enough clothing seemingly to last him a month without duplicating a selection and the man had slipped his credit card across the counter and signed his name on the screen with sloppy S’s that looked like eights the trio headed toward the exit.

“Wait.”

“Did you see something else you wanted?”

He nodded his head and walked toward the colorful booth with the hard plastic seat in the midst of garish creatures meant for children to ride. He slipped into the seat and tugged the black curtain closed. He was rummaging in his pockets when the man poked his head inside. “I’ve been in here before.”

“Not unless you’ve been to the mall without me, Bucky.” He shook his head and pulled the man inside next to him on the narrow seat.

“No, just…in one of these.” He let out a frustrated sound and finally turned his pockets out, finding them empty. The man fished in his own and fed coins into the slot.

“A photo booth? Yeah.” The man’s voice was tight as he pressed buttons to select the number of pictures and what frame should go around them.

He looked hard into the lens, remembering a different booth, a younger man, and a smaller man. A stolen moment.

He gripped the man’s knee then searched for his hand, threading their fingers together. That was better. He relaxed slightly as the flash went off a second time. He looked up at the man who was looking at him. The flash went off a third time. He felt his lips curl up at the edges as it flashed again. When they exited the booth, he tucked the glossy sheet of photos carefully into the bag he was carrying, full of soft tee shirts in muted colors.

***

Bucky hadn’t addressed him by name in two weeks. Not since he’d tried to strangle Steve in his sleep. He couldn’t blame Bucky for it, any of it. The choking or the distance.

But it still hurt.

Bucky had taken care of him and now Steve was failing at taking care of Bucky. He’d been pushy about the clothes because it was the only thing he could think of that would allow them to be close, to talk, without feeling like he was forcing himself on Bucky. But he’d wound up being overbearing and driving Bucky further within himself anyway.

Steve had thought that he’d lost his friend again. Sam assured him time and time again that he hadn’t, that Bucky just needed time and space and patience. That the thousand-yard-stare would probably never go away. That he may never be the same Bucky again. But he could learn to live in the world and that should be enough for now.

When Bucky remembered the photo booth, his heart had felt like it might burst out of his chest. When he threaded their fingers together. When he looked at Steve and smiled. When he looked surprised at how quickly the photos developed—back in their day it had taken ten minutes, they’d have to lurk near the booth to ensure no one saw—and then deliberately slipped the sheet the machine spat out between the shirts in his bag, glancing to either side and casting a ghost of his old mischievous smile on Steve; he knew then that all hope wasn’t lost.

“Broadway.”

“Hmm?”

Bucky was looking out the window at the brick walls of the subway tube speeding by. They’d be back at the house soon enough. Natasha had come out on the lunch break of the temp job she had taken—had to earn a paycheck somehow when the agency you worked for had been toppled—so they were alone. “The photo booth. It was on Broadway. In Manhattan.” His brow gathered and he studied Steve for a moment. “I’m not allowed to go to New York. It’s against protocol.”

Steve laid a tentative hand on Bucky’s knee and wondered briefly what the people on the train around them thought of their odd conversation. “You can go anywhere you want to. Those rules don’t exist anymore.”

Bucky nodded and resumed looking out the window. As they slowed to a station he drew the bag with the pictures in it closer to his chest.

“I liked the green one best.”

Steve raised a brow. It wasn’t often that Bucky initiated small talk. He knew which item was meant—it was colored like the skin of a pear, a buttery soft cashmere. There was nothing subtle about Bucky’s favoring soft, warm, colorful things. After years of hard machinery, cryostasis, and colder handlers Steve would have been surprised if Bucky _didn’t_ like those things. He swallowed, “It suited you. Went well with your eyes.” Could he get any sappier? He’d just blurted out the first thing that had come to mind, not wanting to lose the thread of dialogue. Bucky turned his face toward the window again as the train began to move. Steve pretended not to notice the outstretched pinky slowly hooking through his. He pretended that it wasn’t a big deal that Bucky hadn’t moved his leg or shoved Steve’s hand away.

***

Back at the house it was easier to breathe. He didn’t like the crowds on the subway. He didn’t like the way he couldn’t see what was happening outside the train. He felt trapped. Back at the house with it’s spacious rooms and large windows he could feel secure and free.

The man who could fly was grinning his gap-toothed grin when he got inside. “Good haul?” He wasn’t sure what the man was referring to until he gestured at the bags he was carrying. He nodded and moved through the room, skirting past the man and up the stairs.

“How’d he do?” He hated when they talked about him like he wasn’t there. It was too much like before.

“Great, actually.” There was a certain sadness to the tone.

“That doesn’t sound like great. What’s wrong?”

“I…I think he remembers _us_. No. I _know_ he remembers.” There was a pause and a sigh. “I just don’t want to push too hard. I don’t want to push us together.”

_C’mon. Let’s push the beds together._

He shivered and shook his head and went through the bags methodically, putting the new clothes away in some system and trying to hide the old ones. He was afraid they would disappear. Things were always disappearing before, being wiped away. He didn’t want that. He looked down at the shiny sheet of photographs sitting on top of the dresser. Somewhere in there was something important. Something that had to be held close. Something only for certain eyes. He opened the top drawer and slid the sheet between the folds of the green sweater.

Much later, after he and the man who could fly and the woman who sounded like home and the man who was his mission had eaten a meal and sat watching news that he didn’t absorb, he retired to his bedroom. He felt as though he’d been awake for days. His skin was crawling. The air was too still. Opening the window to feel the night air didn’t help—it was hot wind rather than cool breeze. He stripped down to his skin, carefully draping his bedclothes over the chair in the corner, and laid for another hour on top of the sheets unable to find sleep.

He slid out of bed and paused by the door, listening to the sounds of sleep in the dark house. He padded quietly down the hall and knocked softly on another door.

“Steve?” He whispered, his voice cracking over the single syllable as he eased the door open. The light by the bed was on. The man was sitting propped up in bed, his face illuminated by the tablet resting on his knees. He seemed caught between joy and terror when he looked up. “You awake?” Stupid question.

“Yeah, Buck. Just sketching some. Couldn’t sleep. Everything okay?”

He nodded and started to back away from the door. He changed his mind before he closed it. “No. Can…can we…” He drew in a deep breath. “Can we push the beds together?”

Steve’s eyes shone in the dim light and he put the tablet down on the nightstand. “Yeah. We can do that.” He stepped into the room and shut the door quietly. “Bucky. You’re naked.”

He glanced down at himself, “I know.” He approached the side of the bed, hand hovering over the surface. “Can I?”

Steve nodded. “If that’s what you want.” He climbed onto the bed and settled himself down on his side, his back to Steve. He couldn’t quite remember how this was supposed to work but he remembered feeling whole.

The light went out and Steve’s weight made the mattress move as he shifted himself down. “Bucky?” He could feel the warmth of Steve’s hand hovering over his shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“Do you…do you want me to…”

“Yes.” And just like that, Steve’s warm body was flush against his back, arms starting to snake around his body. “Wait.” The arms froze in place. He squirmed until he could turn over. It was too hot for this, to be wrapped up in each other, but he _needed_ it. He put his arms around Steve, but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t his arms. It was Steve. Steve was wrong. He tried to readjust to no avail. He let out a frustrated sound.

Steve scooted down, face level with his chest now, body hunched and curled around him. A leg tentatively pressed between his own. “Better?”

“Yeah.” They lay like that together for a while, listening to the leaves rustling outside the window on the warm breeze. “Steve?”

“Mm.”

“I remember things and I don’t know what to do with them.”

“It’s okay.” He wondered if Steve could hear his heart thundering in his chest or feel the heat pooling in his belly.

“Do we…did we…are we…” He couldn’t see it in the darkness, but he could imagine Steve looking up at him through thick lashes.

“We were.” Bucky let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He stayed quiet for several moments.

“Steve?” He felt like he needed to keep saying the name. Like it would run away from him if he didn’t. “Can I kiss you?”

“If you want.” Steve shifted in his arms and Bucky dipped his face down to catch his lips.

“I want to.” Steve chuckled, low in his chest, the sound like thunder still a few miles off. “I want to do it again.”

Steve scooted up higher, entangled their bodies more closely. Bucky kissed his lips. His nose. Marked a trail across his jaw. His hands grappled with the bottom hem of Steve’s tank, hitching it up and running his fingers over the hard stomach. He remembered something smoother, less hard with muscle and more sinew. A waist he could get his hands around. A flat plane. A choked sound escaped him. “Bucky, if this is too much—“

“No. It’s not enough.” He released Steve from his arms and sat up. “It’s not enough.” He looked at Steve with his rumpled hair and hitched up shirt, “I just want to _do_ something. Something I can be _good_ at without having problems.” Someone else had said that once. He was grasping for whom. “I can be with you. I can be good at that.” He gripped the bunched up fabric again and gave Steve a serious look. “Let me be good at that.” Steve lifted his arms and allowed his shirt to be removed.

He sat still and allowed Bucky to explore with hand and lip. He could remember a field. A tent. Sweat and dirt. The sounds of nighttime. Hands that matched. He watched Steve’s face, gauging each reaction. Steve’s eyes fell closed, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. He never flinched when the metal touched him. Never shied away. Steve’s chest rose and fell more rapidly; he pressed himself closer to Bucky’s touch. Yes, he could be good at this.

He pressed Steve down into the mattress. Mouthed at the curve of his neck and shoulder. Steve’s hands danced over his back and arms, fingers probing and exploring the seam of the prosthetic against his flesh. Under Steve’s ministrations he forgot to be repulsed. Steve began to meet his lips, move them down over his jaw, behind his ear, across his neck. Bucky pressed a knee gently between his legs, drawing out a whine. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of the cool linen shorts Steve was wearing. “Off,” he said gruffly, and Steve complied.

He could be good at this. He could do something and not have any problems.

The room filled with the sounds of their grappling for purchase, smacking lips, gnashing teeth, panting and huffing, the quiet clinks and whirrs of his arm adjusting with each change of position. Bucky tried to slow it down, rubbing slow circles over Steve’s back and paying special attention to a spot he knew should pain the man but didn’t seem to. Steve sighed and melted into him, fingertips dancing over his hips and sides and probing at the muscles that were taut across his back.

He slipped his hands down, kneading and pressing flesh that shouldn’t be there but was, fingers tracing hips that shouldn’t have been sharp. He reached between them, brushing his fingers against Steve’s half hardness. “Bucky, no.” He pulled his hand away, not knowing quite what to do. Steve’s body expanded and contracted with heavy breaths against him. “I…it just doesn’t feel right.”

“I’ll go.” He started to peel himself away.

“No!” Steve gripped the hard metal of his wrist. “Don’t go. Please. I—I don’t want you to think you _have_ to.”

He settled himself back down. “I don’t think I have to. I think I want to.” Steve didn’t let go. He leaned down kiss him again, hesitant. “I remember a lot more than you all think I do. I remember pushing the beds together. And kissing you in the shadows in alleyways. I remember you pushing me away and telling me to be careful. I remember you turning out the lights and reminding me about the neighbors. I remember hard ground and cramped tents. I remember watching you through my scope and you turning around to salute. I remember you telling me you never realized how blue my eyes were before. And I remember the photo booth.”

Steve had grown very still and quiet. “I remember your back hurting you and your flat feet always aching. I remember making you ride the Cyclone and I remember you puking for days afterward and I remember feeling like absolute trash for it but you said it was the ride of your life.” A soft chuckle and softer lips pressed to his neck. “I remember you not being able to breathe and being scared you were going to die, you fucking punk.”

“Bucky,” the man in his arms breathed. And in that moment, he felt like he could be that man. The man who was sometimes James and sometimes Bucky and sometimes Sergeant Barnes. As long as Steve was there. Because Bucky _knew him_.

Steve kissed him with renewed fervor. Bucky wasn’t sure if there was an inch of skin left that wasn’t burning with the ghost of Steve’s lips when the sun finally rose.

“Steve?” He’d whispered at some point during the humid night.

“Yeah?”

“Do we have to hide anymore? Do we have to worry about the neighbors?”

“No.”

“Steve?”

“Mm.”

“Timely can suck a cock.” That had earned a grin against his skin and the hard grip of Steve’s too-big hands at his backside.

And in the morning, after he’d listened to the sounds of Natalia and Sam walk with sleep-heavy feet down the stairs, he crept back to his own room and tucked the glossy sheet of photos into the frame of the mirror hanging on his wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first public photo booth in the US was installed on Broadway in NYC in 1925. For just a quarter (A whopping $3.40 today with inflation!) you could take a set of eight photos with your sweetie and have them developed and printed out within ten minutes.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed it! As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback.


	4. Challenge Three: First Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A collection of firsts.
> 
> I had ideas for three "first times" for Bucky and Steve. Rather than picking one, I strung them all together to make this ridiculous mess. I hope you all enjoy it.
> 
> I also feel downright terrible posting smut about Captain America on Steve's birthday, gosh darnit! (Not really...)
> 
> Have a happy 4th, everyone!

Bucky’d lurked near the Photomaton on Broadway, waiting for their photographs to develop. It had cost them quite a bit—two whole damned dimes. They’d have to explain where their wages had gone to somehow. But it was Steve’s eighteenth birthday and Bucky could never say no on Steve’s birthday. They’d both always had so little and Steve never asked for anything. So photos it was.

Being as how Steve had to have the most obnoxious birthday ever, there’d been a crowd at the machine all day, according to the attendant in his pristine white gloves. It had already had to be serviced twice. They’d slipped inside the booth when no one appeared to be watching too closely—it was later in the evening, most people were worried about catching their train or hailing a cab—and after they’d snapped their eight, he’d slipped away into the crowd.

So now Bucky was tasked with the waiting. And praying the machine didn’t go on the fritz and have to be serviced because  _Christ_  if anyone saw those photographs…

They’d spent part of the day at Coney Island. They’d strolled on the beach. Bucky’d shoved a handful of hot sand down the back of Steve’s pants and nearly died laughing at the way he’d whooped and jumped around trying to shake it out. Steve was left wheezing for a few minutes, a murderous look on his face, but he’d broken into a grin in the end and allowed Bucky to pull him into the space between two booths at the amusement park and steal one hell of a smooch. He’d eventually decided that he wanted to go over to Manhattan. Bucky was convinced it was just so that he couldn’t be dragged onto a roller coaster, that he wanted to get as physically far away as possible. And in the end, they’d found their way to the Photomaton on Broadway. There had been much more of a crowd when they’d first gotten there. Steve had stood practically on his toes to cup his hand around Bucky’s ear and whisper, “That’s what I want for my birthday, Buck.” They’d gone into a deli to have sandwiches and wait out the crowd. Two dimes and nearly ten minutes later, Bucky had the prints tucked carefully under his cap and was headed toward the rendezvous point they had decided on.

They were mostly silent as they walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. Steve kept glancing at him and grinning like an idiot. They stopped in the middle to watch the fireworks break overhead. Bucky eyed the crowd gathered on the bridge for a moment before he dipped his head down and kissed Steve’s temple. “Happy birthday, punk,” he murmured into the better of Steve’s ears between the booms of the fireworks overhead.

“Thanks, jerk.”

They made their way back to the tiny apartment that Steve and his mother lived in. It was all dark when they arrived, Mrs. Rogers was working late again at the hospital. They moved through the darkened space, stepping around the well-memorized path through the furniture toward the lamp. Steve smiled wide when he saw the loaf-shaped seed cake in the middle of the kitchen table.

_I'm so sorry I missed you, mo leanbh. I hope you had fun with James. --Ma._

He leaned close and breathed in as deeply as he was able. Bucky marveled at the way his eyelashes fell across his cheeks when he closed his eyes to savor the scent of the cake. “Want a slice?”

“Sure.” Bucky plunked down in one of the two chairs at the table and eased his suspenders off of his shoulders. He didn’t realize how exhausted he was until he’d stopped moving. Steve must’ve been running on pure adrenaline. The kid was wired. He’d been the same way, the summer after he’d finished high school. Steve was going on to bigger and better things, though. Steve was going to go to art school and make something of himself. Bucky didn’t have that option. He loved school, but he couldn’t continue. He had a sister to help support and he’d go through hell to make sure she could stay in school and get as far away from the tiny apartments and tenements that had made up their lives.

Bucky laughed as Steve shimmied across the kitchen, dancing to whatever tune was stuck in his head, with two plates from the cupboard. He set one down in front of his seat and the other in front of Bucky before slapping a thick slice of the seed cake down on it. “She put fruit it in!” The excitement that gleamed in his eyes was almost too much to bear.

They sat quietly, the only sounds those of lips and tongue slapping against sticky fingers as they worked their way through their slices. “Ya gonna be a gentleman and take that cap off, ‘ah what?” Steve waggled his eyebrows and sucked hard on a crumb-covered thumb. He was getting downright silly but Bucky didn’t have the heart to tell him to cool it. It wasn’t often Steve let his guard down and his hair loose.

“Well, maybe I’m just tryin’a make a quick get away.”

Steve looked wounded and popped the thumb out of his mouth, “You bett’ah not!”

Bucky chuckled and took off his cap, carefully popping the sheet of photos out of the inside. He hadn’t even looked at them. He slipped them across the table toward Steve. For two whole dimes, they’d gotten eight little squares of evidence of their…

What did you even call what they had?

They’d started as friends. Became brothers or sorts. Grew into  _so much more_. It was like Steve was the missing half of him that he’d never known he was missing. It made him feel complete.

It was maddening. Bucky was always getting set up or asked out. He was drowning in dames—don’t get him wrong, dames were fun—but all he really wanted was this sickly, skinny kid who couldn’t say no to a fight. This kid—no, really, this man now—who he’d follow into the jaws of death because he was just so fiercely dedicated to whatever he was doing in that moment.

And in that moment, he seemed to be fiercely dedicated to boring holes into Bucky’s skull with his gaze. “Whattaya lookin’ at me like that for?”

Steve blushed hard and looked down at the photographs on the table, caressing the edges of the paper and smoothing out the curve of the sheet created by resting against Bucky’s head for hours. “Nothin’. Just lookin’.”

“Yeah. Sure. Just lookin’.” He bumped Steve’s shin with his foot under the table and rose to bring their plates to the sink. He leaned against the wall, watching Steve study the photos. There was nothing  _really_ obscene about them. The first few were just them smiling into the lens, then Bucky had slung his arm around Steve’s shoulders, then he’d ruffled his hair—it was a mess all the damned time anyway, Steve had turned to grin at him, Bucky’d planted a kiss against the side of Steve’s head, then…well, things had devolved. Steve was wheezing when the last flash went off, color high on his cheeks and his ears gone bright red.

Steve had his bottom lip between his teeth. He was still and quiet and wistful. It was the same look he got when he was trying to frame out a sketch or had gotten absorbed in some book. “I’ve got time, ya know. Not expected back until ta’marrah.”

Steve looked up at him, hopeful, “You do?”

“Yeah.” The look on Steve’s face—hope and hunger and happiness and want all mixed together—made Bucky’s heart pound and his stomach flutter.

“Do…do you want’ta listen to the radio some?”

“Sure.” Bucky moved into the living area of the large, single room and flipped on the radio. He tuned it to a station that sounded good and plunked down on the sofa to watch Steve rinse off their plates and replace them in the cabinet then carefully wrap the rest of the seed cake up so that it didn’t go dry.  _Professor Quiz_  was just getting started.

“I wonder if he’ll get stumped ta’night?” Bucky shrugged and watched as Steve carefully leaned down to untie his shoes and slip them off. Next went the socks. He drew his legs up and sat staring off into nowhere as he wiggled life back into his toes and rubbed his woefully fallen arches. “Can ya imagine what we could do with  _twen’ny-five_  whole dollars?”

“I’kin think’a a few things.”

No one stumped the Professor with their question that night to win the big prize. Bucky searched for another station, settling on Kate Smith’s show. Her powerful voice filled the room, echoing back at them as the sound bounced off the building next door and floated back into the open window on the hot July breeze. Bucky nudged Steve’s shoulder. He was hunched over awkwardly. “C’mere. Turn ‘round.” Steve complied, completely unable to stifle the half-pained, half-pleased groan that escaped his lips when Bucky pressed the heel of his palm into Steve’s back, gently working out the knots. He followed the curve of Steve’s spine, kneading and pressing and moving fingers and palms in circles. It had been a little while since Steve had needed the back brace that Mrs. Rogers snagged from the hospital but try as he might Steve couldn’t hide from Bucky the fact that between the flat feet and the scoliosis that his back hurt like hell. “Rough day?”

Steve chuckled, the sound rumbling from somewhere deep within him. It was always surprising when a deep, dark sound like that came out of such a slight body. Bucky slipped the suspenders down off of Steve’s shoulders. “The roughest.”

“Any better now?” He could tell from the slouch of Steve’s shoulders, less hunched and more relaxed, that it was.

“Yeah.” His answer came out high pitched and choked. Bucky leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck, salty and sticky with a day’s worth of fun and sweat. “The neighbors, Buck.” He pointed toward the open window and the light on across the way. Bucky leaned around him to turn off the lamp.

The room was swallowed in darkness and the sound of Kate Smith belting out some tune. Steve shifted and turned until they were pressed front to front. Bucky could feel the hardness of him as he lounged back and the smaller of the pair moved on top of him. Steve kissed him hard, all teeth and suction and desperation. “Hey, Steve?”

“Yeah?” He was already breathing hard, just on the edge of wheezing.

“What shift is your ma workin’?”

“Double. Eve’nin then graveyard. ‘Nd ya don’t have ta be home ‘til mornin’.”

“Yup.”

Bucky’s hands worked at the buttons down the front of Steve’s shirt, untucking it as he went. Steve pressed his forehead into Bucky’s shoulder; working to catch his breath proper while Bucky smoothed his rough hands over Steve’s bare chest and back beneath the fabric. The shirt was abandoned with an annoyed huff from its owner. “ _Bucky_.” His hips stuttered as Steve moved against him.

“Yeah…yeah…” Steve caught his lips again, forceful. “Absolutely.”

“Then shaddup and c’mon.” He was up off of Bucky and the couch in a moment, snatching his shirt up off the floor as he moved through the dark space on muscle memory toward the single bedroom. Bucky’s mind was racing and his heart was pounding. He didn’t know what he was supposed to feel or say or do.

Dames were easy. Dames knew what they wanted and where they wanted it. Not that he was as experienced as everyone seemed to believe, but he knew his way around a woman.

This was  _Steve_. His Steve.

And that was daunting and terrifying and exciting. And his pants were getting too damned uncomfortable to turn back now.

Bucky pressed Steve carefully into the thin mattress of his narrow bed. He had no idea how to go about this and was sure Steve knew even less—all of the information either of them had was second hand at best: overheard whispers in alleys and behind  _those_  bars in their neighborhood, mockery and ribbing over the course of a day’s work at the docks. Steve was so damned fragile, he didn’t want to hurt him anymore than Bucky wanted to be hurt himself; and  _boy_  did he have an idea of what that hurt could be like. First time he’d been with a girl who’d agreed to use her mouth on him she’d done the unthinkable and stuck thumb into him then had the nerve to be offended when he told her to get the  _fuck_  off. She’d rebounded that her last fella had liked it, that he’d asked for it. Bucky’d righted his pants and been out the door so quickly he was two blocks over before he took another breath. Nope. He wasn’t about to do that to Steve.

Steve was too important to be careless.

Bucky abandoned his own shirt and shucked off his shoes, letting them clunk down onto the floor, careless of those living below. Steve’s mouth was on him, hot and wet with those lips that just refused to not pout. Steve’s body was writhing under him, grinding his crotch against Bucky’s thigh. He squeezed his eyes shut as Steve’s fingers carded through his hair and pulled him down. A sound somewhere between annoyance and pleasure escaped him.

“What?”

“Huh?”

“You said something.” Steve’s eyes were wide and wild and shining in the dim light available from the moon outside the window.

“No, I didn’t. I just…” Bucky wanted to wipe that shit-eating grin off Steve’s face when he moved his sharp little hips again and made Bucky’s mouth drop open.

“ _Fuckin’ punk_.”

He made quick work of their trousers and shorts after that. Steve may not have been the most muscular of young men, or the most physically strong, but dammit, Bucky thought he was just about the most glorious thing He’d seen. He was all hard bone and sinew and tendon held together by the sheer determination to live and to fight and if that wasn’t beautiful then Bucky didn’t know what the hell was. If Bucky hadn’t been sure about anything else before in his life he was sure of one thing: He was sure he loved Steve. And in that moment, with that impossibly resilient little body splayed beneath him, he knew he’d never find anything quite like this settling down with a dame.

Steve craned his neck, searching in the shadows and shapes of the darkened room for the table between the two beds that was occupied by all of his various supplements and medications and that sparingly used box of cigarettes and his mothers few cosmetics for something. Bucky reached over for the jar of Vaseline that was supposed to be for Mrs. Rogers’ hands after a long day of constant scrubbing with harsh soap at the hospital. He made a mental note to pull his pocket money together to buy her a new jar, mortified that she might even touch it after this.

Steve moved his legs, spreading them around Bucky and shaking like a leaf as his knees came to rest beside Bucky’s hips. “Bucky, I—“ He pushed Bucky’s hand, holding the jar toward his chest.

Something clicked.

That need to feel completed. That want to not overwhelm Steve.

It clicked.

Bucky chuckled, feeling stupid. Somehow, he’d always known that if they ever got this far that he’d want it this way. “No, Steve.”

Steve’s breath hitched in his throat, “What did I do? I-I-I-“ Bucky kissed him to shut him up, chuckling again softly. “’mm sorry, I thought you—“

“Steve. St’ahp.” His mouth clapped shut. “I meant, no, I want you to…” He eased himself down beside Steve and pressed the Vaseline back into his hands. “I want you…” He wasn’t sure how to say it and not sound like a total jerk. “I want you in me.” Steve was breathing hard. “Steve? Ya okay? Are ya sick?”

He turned and pressed his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck, planting a firm kiss there. “I’m fine.” He scooted himself up to recline against the bed frame. “I’ve got no idea what I’m doin’, though.”

“Neither do I. So we’ll wing it.” Steve nodded. “I think ya need to, um, stretch it.”

“What?”

“Use that, ya dumbo,” he flicked the jar in Steve’s hands, “with ya fingers. So it doesn’t hurt.”

Steve shook his head like he was getting rid of cobwebs. “Right. Yeah. Just…overwhelmed. Jerk.”

They shifted and moved so that Steve could kneel between Bucky’s splayed legs, one of Bucky’s feet planted firmly on the floor. Steve opened the jar with shaking hands and slathered his fingers with the cloudy jelly. Bucky tilted his hips up and blushed, feeling the warmth spread down his neck and over his chest, suddenly extremely aware of his obvious arousal—skin rolled back and head throbbing. “Ya sure?” He nodded. Steve’s index finger slid into him slowly.  _Christ_ , it burned. But it wasn’t off-putting and abrupt like that time before. It was gradual and smooth and it was  _Steve_. He drew in breath as the knobbly middle joint of Steve’s finger slid into him before slowly being pulled back out.

Bucky could remember once Steve coming home and telling him that a woman who’d bought a newspaper from him insisted that he must play the piano because of his fingers. There wasn’t a piano to be had in their neighborhood, but dammit if Steve wasn’t going to make him sing.

“You okay?” Steve’s hand was hot on his thigh, Bucky’s arm was slung over his face, lip caught between his teeth. There were two of those fingers working in and out of him now. He croaked in the affirmative and let Steve go for another minute before he couldn’t take it anymore. Steve was getting bold. Scissoring his fingers. Crooking them up.

“Stop! Stop. Enough. Do it. Do it now.”

“Are you su—“

“Steve,  _please_.” Something thicker than Steve’s fingers, blunter, warmer, pressed against him. Pressed into him. Bucky groaned at the burn. He should have let Steve keep going. He could get used to it. It would be fine. Steve braced a hand against Bucky’s chest as he slid himself in, slowly. “Steve, breathe. Ya gonna give yourself an attack.” A sharp breath. He hunched forward, forehead pressed beside his hand.

“ _Bucky_.”

They stilled while Steve gathered himself together. It was getting frustrating. He was acclimated. He needed more. “Dammit, Steve,  _move_.”

“Yeah…okay…move.” He backed his hips up slowly, pulling out and sliding back in. He rolled with the motion, clearly trying to keep a hold on himself. Unintelligible things slipped from his lips. He shifted; hit something within Bucky that felt like those fireworks over the bridge.

“ _There_ , do that again.” He did, Bucky keened. They fell into a rhythm. Bucky started moving his hips to meet Steve on the downswing.

It wasn’t long, but it was perfect. Awkward and fumbling. But perfect. “Buck, I’m…I think…” He started to pull out and Bucky wrapped his legs around Steve’s waifish waist, not letting him go. Steve leaned down and pressed his face into Bucky’s shoulder as he came, hips stuttering under the weight of Bucky’s legs and the sensation running through him.

Bucky was hyper-aware of his own still-hard cock trapped between their bodies making a slick spot against his skin. “Steve, I—“

“I know,” he croaked. Steve slipped his hand between them, still slick with Vaseline, and let those long fingers wrap around Bucky’s erection. He was almost embarrassed at how few strokes it took before he was coming hard and gripping the mattress. When Bucky was finished panting, Steve pulled away and snatched his sock off his foot.

“Hey!”

“Sh’addup.” Steve chuckled as he used the sock to wipe their bodies of Vaseline and cum before all but collapsing in a heap on top of Bucky. He was wheezing softly, not quite enough to be concerned. Bucky ignored the fact that it was far too hot for Steve to be on top of him. He ignored how sore he was starting to feel now that his heart had slowed and he caught his breath. Because this was worth it. Steve was worth it.

Steve settled with his cheek resting against Bucky’s shoulder. “Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.” His whisper was barely audible. Steve’s body went rigid, like he was waiting to be pushed off or hit or flat out rejected.

“Ya better.”

“Oh yeah?” Bucky could feel Steve’s grin against his skin.

“Yeah.” He found Steve’s hand and threaded their fingers together. “Because I’m with ya ‘till the end of the line.”

They shifted around, too drained and wobbly to go out to the living room and snag the cushions off the couch, to better fit themselves on the narrow bed. Steve curled his body around Bucky possessively and buried his face into the back of Bucky’s neck. “Hey, Buck?” Bucky groaned in response, just wanting to sleep. “You gotta leave before ma comes home.”

“I know.”

“And tell Rebecca that I liked the handkerchief. Her stitchin’s gettin’ real good.”

“Okay, Steve.” They drifted in the hot breeze. When the sun began to rise, Bucky freed himself from the cage of Steve’s limbs. He patted Steve’s thigh to wake him. “Put these back on. Wouldn’t want your ma to have to see ya bony ass.” Steve snorted in insult and amusement as he slipped his shorts on and watched Bucky dress.

Bucky shoved his socks into his pocket, crinkling his nose at the entertained look on Steve’s face. “I’ll see ya later, punk.”

“Lunch time, jerk. I’ll bring ya a sammich.” Bucky chuckled and leaned down to plant a kiss on Steve’s lips.

***

It had been a week since Steve had stormed the HYDRA base all by himself. Bucky still couldn’t believe that any of it had been real. He kept expecting to wake up and still be strapped down to that fucking table while…

Who? What was his name? Bucky dug for it in the back of his head, scratched at it like an itch. Zola. Dr. Zola.

While Zola slipped needles in his arms and shot his head full of electricity that made his whole body twitch and sing.

Dum Dum made a joke about the fact that his pants were wet the first time they shoved him back in the cell with the others, before they’d decided isolation was best if whatever their scheme was, was going to work. Bucky decked the goon who came to haul Morita off for testing. He didn’t get back up. Dum Dum never made another joke about wet pants.

Bucky was sure this was all some complex hallucination. That they were fucking with his head again.

But every time Steve flashed him that infuriatingly lopsided smile, he became slightly less sure about it all being a hallucination and slightly more sure that he wanted to throttle Dr. Irksome or whatever his name had been if he ever got the chance to meet him. He’d had no right to take Steve and turn him into…whatever this was. This…Super Soldier. When someone mentioned that the man had been killed the same day, Bucky didn’t have it in him to be too broken up over it.

There was no need to turn Steve into this big hulking thing. He didn’t need to be physically strong. He already had so much strength in his heart and head. They didn’t need to slap a star on his chest and those ridiculous little wings on his head. He already glowed. He already had wings—those sharp shoulder blades that stuck out from behind his suspenders and made him look like a bird who’d lost all his feathers. They didn’t need to teach him to shoot a gun and kill with his hands. His hands were meant for something else, for beautiful things. Those long, knobbly fingers that could caress a masterpiece out of a blank page and a pile or charcoal. Those fingers that made Bucky sing far before Zola’s shocks ever did.

They took Steve.  _His_  Steve. They took him and shoved something else in his place.

They thrust him into this country. This war. This bloodbath. When all Bucky wanted was for him to stay back in Brooklyn. Who cares if all he could do was collect scraps in his little red wagon? That was just as important. And about a thousand times more safe. He was supposed to stay in Brooklyn and get a staff position at that advertising firm. He was supposed to demand meetings with Timely and get a staff job drawing or inking. He was supposed to make sure Rebecca stayed in school and didn’t come home to be a riveter like she kept threatening. He needed to be home to protect the things Bucky couldn’t while he was over there.

He didn’t belong here.

Bucky couldn’t protect him if he was here.

Bucky couldn’t keep his head on straight and his feelings in check if he was here.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair for him to put all of that on Steve, either. Bucky’d ended it. Steve was halfway through his time at art school when he’d done it. They were living together in absolute sin in a two-room apartment near the dock. It was easier for Bucky to get to work that way. And the air was cleaner out there, made it easier for Steve to breathe. There was more unobstructed, natural light for him to work on sketches in.

There was a kid they’d been to high school with. Never went out with any of the dames. Hardly talked to them. Hardly talked to anybody. He’d been beaten damned near to death after getting caught coming out of a bar that catered to a certain kind of clientele. Was lying unconscious for a few days in the hospital. When he woke up it was like he was three years old again. His ma was crushed. His pop up and left.

Bucky didn’t want that for Steve. People already thought there was something wrong with him on account of his asthma. There wasn’t a damned thing wrong with him. But no one wanted to believe that. He didn’t want Steve beaten down in an alley and unconscious in a hospital and awake and acting like a child. He didn’t have a ma to be crushed or a pop to up and leave. As much as Bucky loved the stuffing out of Steve, he knew he’d never be able to support him or take care of him like that.

He had nightmares about Steve in one of those god-awful houses with all the loonies and the nurses who didn’t care.

He told himself it was to protect Steve. But it was just as much to protect himself. He didn’t want to end up in the East River.

So he ended it. “I can’t do this anymore, Steve. I’ve gotta find a good dame. Settle down. There’s nuh’thin fer us. No life. No future.”

Steve hadn’t spoken to him for a week. Then he’d had an attack that had scared Bucky half to death. It started with a cough and had grown into Steve on the floor clawing at his shirt collar, tears and snot streaming down his face. He’d held onto Bucky like his life depended on it. There had been smears of charcoal over the back of his shirt when Steve had finally let go. “Can…can we still be…like before? Like before my birthday?” Bucky didn’t have to ask what Steve meant by that. Could they go back to being friends? Brothers? Confidantes? Comrades? Everything but…what they were.

“Yeah. We can.” Because even though that was the most painful thing in the world—more painful than moving out would have been because Steve would have somehow landed on his feet, he was nothing if he wasn’t resourceful—it was better. Selfish, but better. “End’a the line, remember?”

So he started planning doubles and group dates. Dragging Steve out to dances. Trying to teach him how to Lindy. Dragging Steve out to movies. Over the bridge to Central Park. Bucky renewed his reputation as a ladies man. Steve remained stubbornly single.

“Just can’t find the right partner, Buck.” He’d said it with that lopsided smile and it had killed Bucky to hear it.

So when he’d disappeared at Modern Marvels, Bucky had panicked. He’d thought Steve had gone and done something stupid. He’d hoped he’d been able to stop Steve before he did it—before he got himself thrown the hell in jail where they wouldn’t take care of him, where they wouldn’t hold him while he worked through an attack or rub the tension out of his back or make sure his ulcers weren’t acting up or speak at the right volume in the right ear or let him know what colors went together or read him things when his eyes were tired. Or worse. Some jackass would take him. Some jackass would give him that goddamned 1A he wanted so badly. He’d kick the bucket in basic. Maybe they’d be smart enough to give him a desk job. It wouldn’t satisfy Steve, but he’d be in the Army and he’d be safe.

Bucky had left the girls early giving them the excuse that he had to catch a train and report at an unholy hour the next morning. It was a lie, but they’d taken it. He’d sat on the stoop of the building he and Steve lived in the rest of the night. Too afraid and ashamed to go inside.

Rebecca had come home from school anyway. She’d written Bucky to let him know that she was okay, that she was keeping up her studies in correspondence, she’d still graduate, she still planned to get herself into college. She also wrote that the apartment was empty. No one in the neighborhood knew where Steve had gone. He wasn’t in Brooklyn. Maybe he had gotten that job at Timely? Maybe he’d moved to Manhattan? She’d gone so far as to ask after him at Brooklyn Hospital. No one remembered him having been brought in either for one of his many maladies or having been beat up.

_Steve,_

_Stop fuckin lying to me. I know you’re not in New York. I told you not to do anything stupid._

_Marching into [REDACTED] soon. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to write again or get any mail._

_I don’t know how the fuck you’ve been getting my letters if you’re not in New York._

_Bucky_

He never got a letter back. The Germans had captured them, some group called HYDRA who was apparently too much even for Hitler.

And then, like something out of a dream, Steve had appeared. “So ya definitely weren’t in New York.” He’d eyed the giant beside him critically. Same attitude. Same slightly off-kilter stride when he relaxed. Same hunch to his shoulders.

“No. I wasn’t.”

“How were ya gettin’ my lett’ahs?”

“SSR was intercepting your mail, sticking fake post marks on my responses.”

“Why? If they weren’t gonna use ya for what the mad scientist wanted, why bah’tha?”

The man who was supposed to be Steve shrugged. “To protect their secrets, I guess. Keep the jump on Zola and Schmidt. I really don’t understand a lot of it. Dr. Erksine took a lot of that information with him when he died.”

“Ya talk funny.”

“What?”

“Ya talk funny. They serum-ed the Brooklyn right outta ya.”

He chuckled. “No, that wasn’t the serum. That was the elocution lessons. Can’t be the  _Star Spangled Man with a Plan_  if you can walk the walk but can’t talk the talk.” Bucky huffed and went silent. He didn’t know what else to say.

“Let’s hear it for Captain America!” His heart had leapt into his throat at the moniker.  _Let’s hear it for Steve. Let’s hear it for my stupid friend who couldn’t stay home. Let’s hear it for this man who means everything to me. Let’s hear it for this big fucking idiot to jumped out of a goddamned plane under fire and stormed an enemy base on the off chance I was alive._

_Let’s hear it for the slim hope that he might still love me. Even after I’ve hurt him so badly. Even after I’ve pushed him away. Even after I shoved him in a corner and expected him to carry on like none of it ever happened._

So it had been a week. Bucky was sitting alone in the tent, slowly and carefully cleaning his rifle. He was sliding the cleaning rod down into the barrel when Steve pulled the flap aside and asked if he could come in. Bucky grunted in response, focused on his task. They were out scouting the next HYDRA base. They’d already taken out the checkpoint. There wouldn’t be anyone to warn the base that they were coming. Reinforcements would be there within hours once Jim radioed in their coordinates and conditions permitted.

“You okay?” Bucky grunted again. “Are you mad at me?”

“What would I have to be mad at you for? Not like you did anything stupid like join the fucking army.”

“Bucky, I—“

“I don’t want to hear it, Steve. What’s done is done.” He put the rifle aside and wiped his hands on his trousers. “At least ya’ll be in the hospital less often. If ya can avoid gettin’ shot. And this,” he waved his hands in Steve’s general direction, “turns out ta be permanent.”

Steve looked down at his boots, silenced for the moment. “Ya worried Bec ta death. Di’ja write ‘er?”

“I did. I apologized. It all happened really fast, Buck. I told you that. I couldn’t stop to tell people where I was going. Heck, I didn’t even know where I was going. Wound up at a training camp in Jersey. They did the thing back in Brooklyn. Then they swept me away on the USO tour. I just…I didn’t want to be useless. And I didn’t want to be a lab rat. You’ve gotta understand, Buck.”

“I ain’t gotta understand nuh’thin. You were plenty useful right where ya were.” They sat in silence for a few moments. Jones stuck his head in to let them know that they were going to scout out the area. The team was restless. Steve nodded his acknowledgement and remained where he was. “So.”

“So what?”

“You and Agent Carter. She’s an intrest’in dame.” There had been an unquestionable chemistry between the two of them that night at the bar. Bucky knew there was no hope then. He’d never have Steve back. He’d found the right partner. He’d found someone who wasn’t a selfish fool the way Bucky felt he’d been.

Steve’s smile was longing and sad. “Yeah. She’s incredible.” He ran his hand through his hair. Someone had taught him how to keep it neat. It hardly ever fell all lanky in his face anymore. “She wears so much red. It’s so bright. It’s…it’s…everything is just in color now. These people. Theses places. Everything. Everything is so  _vibrant_.”

Bucky struggled to keep a check on the feelings welling up inside of him and making his chest feel tight. It was just all too much to process. But if Steve had found a dame who could match him—someone with just as fierce a heart and determined a spirit and as deep a well of brilliance—then he couldn’t be upset. It was what he had wanted for Steve, for himself, right? A life? A future? Not a hospital bed or the East River.

“I forgot how  _blue_  your eyes were.”

Bucky wrinkled his nose and looked at Steve full on, “What?”

“Your eyes. They’re like…I don’t know. Anything I can think of sounds foolish. A robin’s egg or a clean lake or the sky over the park when there’s no clouds.”

Steve had always had a hard time with colors. He had a hard time with seeing in general, but that was beside the point. He’d always confused darker colors, muted ones, colors that were similar or a mixture of two things. It seemed to get worse over the years. The last few were the worst. Seemed like every time he got beat the hell up he saw things a little less vibrantly, asked Bucky a few more times than was strictly necessary if the paints or chalks he was using clashed with each other or if he’d gotten the color of something right. He talked about how everything was muddy. Reds and blues were still just barely the exception. Bucky wondered if he was just giving up. If every time he picked a fight and came home a little more confused and disappointed he might just be confused and disappointed that that fight hadn’t ended it.

“So? Your eyes are blue too. Did you forget that?”

“I don’t think about my eyes. I think about yours.” His cheeks colored and his ears turned red. “I think about yours a lot, Buck.”

“Why?” Bucky huffed out a laugh.

“Because I miss you.”

“I’m right here.”

“No. I  _miss_  you.” He looked away, toward the flap at the front of the tent. “I miss us. The way we were.” He shifted like he was uncomfortable. “I can’t feel that way about anyone else.”

Bucky shook his head. “Agent Carter is—“

“Agent Carter is wonderful. And I respect the hell outta her. I can see myself sweeping her off her feet at the end of this whole thing, asking her if she was interested. I can see it the same way I can see you pulling some dame aside and kissin’ ‘er breathless when you step off the train in New York.” He furrowed his brow. “But…imagining all that, it doesn’t make me feel the same way that seeing you smiling down at me in the Photomaton made me feel.”

Bucky couldn’t help the choked sound that escaped him.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go. I—I know that’s not what you want. I’ll, ah…I’ll go catch up with Dugan. Scope out the area s’more.”

“They didn’t scrub the Brooklyn completely outta ya.” His voice was softer than he’d intended.

“What?”

“Yer accent. They didn’t get rid of it. Not completely.”

“I guess not.” He turned around, started to crawl out of the tent. Bucky reached out and caught his heel.

“Steve?” He turned back toward Bucky, sitting there struggling to hold everything back. This had to be something they were cramming in his head. This had to be something they were doing. He was going to wake up back on that table any minute. Hot tears rolled down over his cheeks making anger and embarrassment bubble to the surface. “I miss you, too.” Steve sat down hard, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “Steve?”

“Yeah.” His whisper was just barely audible.

“I  _miss_  you.” Bucky surged forward and captured Steve’s head in his hands, holding onto his hair tightly. He kissed Steve with all the strength he could muster, trying to tell him everything he couldn’t put into words.

Bucky didn’t care if he woke up back on the table getting shot full of electricity. If his body was going to sing, it was going to sing on his terms. He groaned at the feel of Steve pushing him down and assaulting his neck with those lips. They writhed against each other in the cramped space of the tent, the rest of the world falling away. The danger of being caught by one of the team or an unfriendly that wandered too close receded into the distance as they rutted roughly against each other.

Steve was panting, “Bucky, I…” He made a strangled sound and gripped the front of Bucky’s jacket, pressing his face into his chest. Bucky moved his hips up sharply and Steve squeaked.  _Squeaked._  Like a mouse. The giant that used to be his little bird-like friend let out the most questionable little sound.

Bucky made quick work of his belt and shoved his trousers and shorts down on his hips to free his cock. He arched into Steve’s touch when his gloved hand wrapped around it. “Steve—“ He took a sharp breath when the hand began to move, slowly, maddeningly. “I want—“ Another breath. “I need—“ Steve’s fingers worked to strip off his belt and holster, to get the zipper on his trousers open. He took both of them in hand, moving his hips up and down. Bucky clung to him, unable to articulate what exactly he wanted, what he needed.

“Steve—no—Steve!” He froze, moved his hand away gently. Bucky sat up, forcing Steve up with him. Bucky shuffled, shifting awkwardly. He put a hand on Steve’s thick shoulder. No more bony wings. Just hard muscle. “D-down.” Steve groaned as he let himself be pressed forward, let Bucky yank his trousers down over his hips. He marveled over the heavy dimple in the side of Steve’s buttock as his legs tensed, the hard flesh round and ripe—no trace of the bone and sinew creature that was there before. Steve pressed his face into the crook of his arm, planted firmly against the hard-packed earth. Bucky slipped his fingers down, kneaded at that spot just between, making Steve cry out and muffle the sound desperately in the padded sleeve of his uniform. Bucky rubbed himself against Steve’s curves and seams, bringing himself as hard as he could get. “Steve—“

“Do it.”

Bucky would have killed a man for some Vaseline. Instead he spit into his palm, imagining the grimace on Steve’s angular face—no Steve’s prominent brow and strong, square jaw—and worked a finger inside. Steve pressed back against him within a few strokes. Bucky added a second finger, scissoring and crooking and twisting, relishing in the feel of Steve legs trembling on either side of him, of Steve’s boot twitching and scraping against his calf. “Fucking… _Christbuckydoit_.”

His cock was already drooling, practically painfully hard. He pressed his lips into a line to keep from groaning as he slicked himself with his own fluid, clear and sticky. It was inefficient and insufficient but he wasn’t about to do something idiotic like used the damned gun oil.

Steve made the most gloriously pleased and pained sound that Bucky had ever heard when he pressed himself inside. He knew that burn. He knew that stretch. He knew what it was like to finally feel complete, like the missing piece of you was fitting itself back, agonizing inch by inch.

He hoped that was how Steve felt.

Steve sucked in great, heaving breaths, his hips squirming and jerking. They had no time for slow and steady acclimation. They had no patience for it. All they had was that moment in that cramped tent on their knees in the dirt in God knows what stretch of woods in some war-torn country that neither of them ever imagined being thrown into.

But nothing else had ever felt that close to home. Because whatever they had done to make Steve look so damned different on the outside, they could never change the way he felt, the way he fit, the way that perfect tightness and warmth and want and need was just so essentially  _Steve_.

Bucky just kept snapping his hips, pressing his chest down against Steve’s now-broad back, holding onto the straps meant to secure that obnoxious looking shield to anchor himself in the solidness of whatever reality was in front of him. In the muffled slap of skin on skin, every time Steve backed into a thrust, pressed himself up or down, met and matched Bucky’s force, Bucky hoped they were saying all of the things that he couldn’t bring himself to put into words.

I need you.

I want you.

I miss you.

I have to have you.

I was terrified.

I am terrifed.

You’re the only thing that matters.

I’ll fucking die if you die.

I don’t know how to be me without you.

You’re a fucking punk.

You’re a fucking jerk.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Steve was stroking himself. His hand moved with more purpose. Bucky felt Steve’s body tense and flutter and shake beneath him. He came with an agonized sound, his body faltered, staying upright with what seemed like sheer will power. Bucky continued to pound into him. His movements getting harsh and careless. He came without an ounce of grace, his nose pressed into the junction between Steve’s shoulders, sure that the clips for the shield would leave marks on his cheeks and not particularly caring.

“Bucky—“

“Don’t say it.”

“But—“

“Don’t. Please. Just…just let me have this.” He gingerly pulled himself out of Steve, tucking himself away, not caring to clean up. Steve knelt there, bared ass in the air, sides heaving.

Steve drew his knees closer, sat up, righted his uniform, and became the Star Spangled Man again. “No, Bucky, you don’t get to  _just have this_.” He swiped at his face, red and splotchy with activity and…something else. “Because you’re not allowed to leave me again. To the end of the fucking line, remember?”

Bucky finished cleaning his rifle, trying to get a hold on all of the things welling up and thrashing around inside of him. When he was done, he crawled out of the tent. Steve was on his knees, starting a fire. Falsworth was sharpening a knife. Morita and Gabe and Dum Dum were yucking it up. “Ey, Barnes! Finally came outta that cave!” Bucky grunted his acknowledgement. “Frenchie caught us a feast!” Dernier grinned and held up two rabbits each in his hands. “We’re gonna eat like goddamned kings tonight.”

“Won’t the smoke attract unfriendlies?”

Steve shook his head, “We’re far enough away that they won’t risk a scout and close enough to the check point for them to think it’s their own.”

Dum Dum sat down with his legs splayed to strip off his gear. “You two kiss and make up yet? We’re all a little tired a’ Ma and Pop givin’ each other the cold shoulder.” He pointed a blunt finger in Steve’s direction. “And just so ya know, the kids are goin’ with Pop if ya get a dee-vorce.” Bucky snorted. Maybe he wouldn’t be waking up on Zola’s table after all.

***

It had been well over a year. Sometimes, the Soldier was still there. The nameless Asset. The ghost assassin. The tool. The weapon. The threat.

But wasn’t that what he had always been, on some level? He was the silent fury that swept in and broke noses and bruised ribs and booted asses in alleyways. He was the quiet directive, maneuvering and manipulating on the docks, trying to get things to move more swiftly, more in his favor. He was invisible death, hidden on the crest of a hill or in the brush or perched in a tree, ready to fire on anyone who came too near, anyone who would compromise The Captain or the Howlers.

Whatever they had done to him, it wasn’t that they had taken something from him, ripped it away and shoved something else inside. No, he realized more and more each day that it wasn’t the case at all. They’d simply taken what was already there and twisted it to their own advantage, used it for their own purposes.

He was the Asset. The assassin. The Soldier.

And it killed him.

He’d been through some semblance of therapy; Wilson’s quiet determination had pulled things out of him that he hadn’t known he had. He remembered most things. Some more hazy than others, but he’d recovered much of what the constant wiping and conditioning and leaps through time in stasis had taken away. Sometimes more than he really wanted, but he needed it.

He needed all of it.

Because in the end, all of it was him. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. Sergeant Barnes. The Asset. The Winter Soldier. It all amounted to one being, twisted and disjointed as it was.

Steve was all slowness and understanding. They’d spent ages circling each other like caged animals, looping around and snatching at bits like the most precarious game of cat and mouse.

It had ended in crashing together. All lips and teeth and hard hands and slick metal and firm but pliant flesh. He’d pounded everything he had into Steve. Pounded away his hurt and confusion. And Steve had taken it all like he needed it to live.

They fell into a pattern. Steve on his knees. Steve on his back. Steve on his stomach. Steve in the shower. Steve straddling him in a chair. Steve on top of him on the goddamned kitchen floor. In Steve. Against Steve. Mouth and hands and ass. Fingers and cocks and flesh and metal.

It all threatened to tear him apart even as it was helping him stitch it all together.

“You’re not allowed to leave me again,” he’d said. But Bucky had failed at that and he had endless decades to make up for. Wilson joked that they were too elderly to be doing the things they did. One of them was going to break a hip. He also made directions to the nearest sex shop available, wordlessly and in complete understanding. “Sometimes, it’s better to show than to tell. If you need to show, then show. Words are messy. Actions are decisive.” He’d smiled that endearing smile, the one that made Bucky feel like he could trust him. “Just don’t tell me what you’re showin’ him. That is information I could live without!”

Bucky’s only thought had been that _good God_ there was certainly a lot more options available than Vaseline. The polite girl with the purple hair behind the counter was more than happy to assist him in choosing something that would be compatible with metal, something that wouldn’t gum up his joints. “Certainly an interesting kit you’ve got there. Must’ve cost a small fortune. Where’d you lose it?”

Bucky flexed his fingers, listening to the barely audible clicks and whirs as the arm calibrated each small movement. This little fairy-like creature was bold and forward and inquisitive. Reminded him of someone he knew. “The war.” She didn’t need to know which one.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. My girlfriend’s brother lost his leg on an IED check. He doesn’t have anything nearly that fancy, though.”

Bucky shrugged. He’d come to terms with the arm. There was no option to rid himself of it. He couldn’t grow a new one like a lizard re-growing a tail. It was too much a part of him to consider anything else. “Experimental technology.” She nodded like that was the most complete answer she’d ever been given and handed him his change and the discreet paper bag. He was constantly amazed at how one person could be so completely trusting and the next would cross the street to avoid you for sneezing the wrong way. Not that any of that was new. Just still very much amazing.

Steve wouldn’t be home until later in the evening. The paper bag had been burning a hole in the bottom of his drawer for three days. He’d carefully avoided any sort of intimacy, indulging Steve with kisses and caresses but not signaling interest in anything more. He wanted…

He wasn’t really sure what he wanted. But he knew that whatever it was, he needed it to be special. Not that intimacy with Steve was ever not special, just…this was different.

Steve had been offended that morning when Bucky turned away, saying that he was tired. “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Clearly there’s something up, Buck. Is it…” He trailed off, his tone unsure. “Is it memories? Anxiety? I—I don’t know what to do, or what I did. I can’t help you…I can’t _protect_ you…if you can’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Bucky had raised a brow, “I’m the one who’s supposed to protect you, remember? Or are you too big for those britches?” He turned back over and let Steve plant a kiss against his temple. He appreciated that Steve never walked on eggshells. He treated him the way he always had. Open and honest. It helped. It helped more than talking to Wilson or anything else. The normalcy. Even if it was forced sometimes. “You didn’t do anything. I’m just…I’ve got a lot on my mind. I don’t have room in there to be in the mood. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

Steve had frowned by accepted the explanation. He had a day full consulting with some general or another, Avengers business. He didn’t like to bring his work home and Bucky didn’t like to pry. If Steve needed to vent he knew he could. Bucky was still adamantly refusing to join the team. It didn’t feel right.

So instead, he spent the day alone puttering around the house. Reading the paper. Watching television. Standing in front of the fridge and staring into it aimlessly like different food might appear if he stared long enough. Dinnertime came and passed. Steve still wasn’t home.

Bucky was restless. He felt as though there was something gnawing at him from the inside. He showered, hoping to relax his body enough that his mind had no choice but to follow. When he was finished, he flopped down across the bed. Steve hated it when he did that, insisted that if he was going to that he should keep to his own damned side. Bucky felt this required him to do it as often as possible.

His body refused to relax. He turned over onto his stomach, wet hair sticking to his face. That discreet paper bag was still burning a hole in his drawer. His cheeks grew warm. Maybe that was what he needed. To be on his own. To figure himself out.

He was blushing like a dame getting asked to dance, dammit.

He took the bag out of the drawer and uncapped the bottle of lubricant it held. It was cool and smooth on his fingers, smelled clean and innocuous. He turned back over, holding his hand above himself and examining it before closing his eyes and taking himself in hand.

He stroked slowly. He wasn’t in a rush. He just needed to feel. To touch. To get a grip on things. Just languid strokes. Heat pooled in his belly. The soles of his feet felt warm. His chest flushed with color. Skin pulled back. Head swelled. Flesh throbbed. Beads of sweat stood out on his skin to replace the drying moisture of the shower.

It was the dumbest idea he’d had in a while.

That was not relaxing.

He felt even more like he was going to crawl right out of his skin.

Abandoning the endeavor wasn’t going to help any more than continuing would.

Bucky squeezed more of the lubricant out onto his fingers and tipped his hips forward. He drew his bottom lip into his mouth, forcing himself quiet as he tentatively touched and prodded. _The neighbors, Buck._ He could hear Steve’s hiss of a whisper in his ear. There weren’t any neighbors to worry about, old habits died hard.

Bucky pressed a finger inside, groaning at the initial burn, the initial involuntary protest. He slid his finger easily in and out, added a second, bit down harder on his lip.

He could hear his heart pounding in his ears. Feel his pulse on the inside of his thigh. He slipped his left hand down, cool and smooth and barely ridged, the fingers slipped in easily when he removed the first.

It was at once familiar and foreign, both himself and something completely other. Overwhelming as he scissored his fingers, wondered what a third might feel like as he went soft.

The mattress dipped beside him. “How often do I have to ask you not to lay on the bed while your wet?” The corners of his mouth turned up. He shivered as Steve’s hand cupped his face and lips grazed his cheek. “Can I?”

Bucky had not allowed Steve to touch him like that. To open him. To splay him. Hadn’t allowed Steve inside. Hadn’t allowed him to get close that way. Bucky knew it was frustrating. Steve never complained. He understood that the thought made Bucky feel too vulnerable, too weak, too much. It made Bucky hate him and love him at the same time, that he could be that damned good.

“Bucky?”

“Yeah.” He sucked in a breath as Steve’s hand floated downward. “ _Yes_.”

Steve’s calloused finger slid in all too easily beside Bucky’s own. He cried out, squeezed his eyes shut. Too much. “Are you okay? Is this okay?” Bucky nodded once, his head coming up and down sharply. It wasn’t enough. Steve’s finger slid in and out beside smooth, slick metal, the motion eased exponentially by Bucky’s own pliancy and the clear, clean lube. After a few moments Steve drew both their hands away. Bucky frowned at the loss and opened his eyes.

“Steve?”

His face was pink, ears bright red. His chest was filling slowly and deliberately. His pupils were blown as wide as Bucky imagined his own probably were. “Can I?” Bucky craned his neck upward, caught Steve’s lips in his.

“ _Yes_.”

Steve eased himself off the bed and pulled his clothing off in controlled movements, leaving it strewn on the floor. The mattress dipped again as Steve settled himself beside Bucky, his body like a furnace against Bucky’s skin. “You’re sure?” The look on Steve’s face—hope and hunger and happiness and want all mixed together—made Bucky’s heart pound and his stomach flutter.

“Quit askin’.” Steve mouthed at Bucky’s shoulder as he stroked himself to hardness, already halfway there. Steve smirked down at him when he picked up the bottle from beside Bucky on the bed. He rolled his eyes as Steve slicked himself. “Fuckin’ punk.”

“Jerk.”

As Steve slid into him, hot and blunt and smooth and slick, something clicked.

A need to feel completed that he knew was there and refused to acknowledge. A want to allow himself to be overwhelmed.

It clicked.

Bucky chuckled, feeling stupid. Somehow, he’d always realized that if they ever got this far, that he’d want it this way. Need it this way. Need to feel like his former self. Need to feel like his current self. Need to feel enveloped completely in warmth and trust, things he hadn’t felt for decades.

This wasn’t about pounding his pain and anger and frustration away. This wasn’t about making up for lost decades.

It was just about the two of them. The way it always had been. Even when Bucky pushed Steve into a corner and expected him to just get on with it, to exist as if nothing had transpired between them when everything really had.

“Dammit, Steve, _move_.”

“Yeah…okay…move.” He backed his hips up slowly, pulling out and sliding back in. He rolled with the motion, clearly trying to keep a hold of himself. Unintelligible things slipped from his lips. He shifted, hit something within Bucky that made his body sing. That felt like fireworks over the Brooklyn Bridge.

“ _There_ , do that again.” He did, Bucky keened. They fell into a rhythm. Bucky started moving his hips to meet Steve on the downswing.

It wasn’t long, but it was perfect. Awkward and fumbling. But perfect. “Buck, I’m…I think…” He started to pull out and Bucky wrapped his legs around Steve’s narrow waist, not letting him go. Steve leaned down and pressed his face into Bucky’s shoulder as he came, hips stuttering under the weight of Bucky’s legs and the sensation running through him.

Bucky was hyper-aware of his spine turning to jelly, of his forgotten and still-soft cock trapped between their bodies, sticking against his skin with drying lube.

“Steve, I—“

“I know.” Steve eased himself out. They shimmied and shifted, splayed awkwardly across the bed. Steve buried his face in the still wet hair at the back of Bucky’s neck, his limbs curling around Bucky’s body.

They dozed for several minutes, the evening darkening outside the windowpane. Bucky shifted, relishing in the distant, overworked feeling that had settled over him. “I think I need another shower.” Steve chuckled, the puff of air tickling his skin.

“You’re drying off after this time.”

Curled up in bed, dry and warm in the darkness, Steve turned to Bucky. “How long have you had that lube?”

“Three days.”

Steve made a self-satisfied sound. “I love you, jerk.”

“Punk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So firstly, the Photomaton cost a quarter in 1925. It certainly would have cost more in '36, but "two dimes" was just more fluid to write. So bear with me and suspend some disbelief for my purposeful historical inaccuracy.
> 
> According to _Irish Central_ , "a leanbh" is a term of endearment meaning "my child." Please, as ever, correct me if I'm wrong or if there is something more appropriate that Sarah would have called Steve for the language or the time.  
> EDIT: Thanks to an Irish reader I've had a correction and I'm fixing up my pronouns across my work! The term should be "mo leanbh." Thanks, ForeverEffervescent!
> 
>  _Professor Quiz_ was a radio show popular at the time the beginning of this chapter is taking place. Listeners would send in questions and if the Professor didn't know the answer they would win $25 in silver dollars.
> 
> In my mind, when HYDRA is "wiping" and conditioning Bucky, they're essentially administering really intense electroshock therapy sessions. I've done a little bit of reading on it and in that course, I've come across some testimonials from patients. Their stories often included losing control over their bodies and finding that they'd wet themselves at the end of a session.
> 
> Pre-serum Steve is color blind (which I believe is canon at least in MCU, correct me if I'm wrong, please), but they never specify which kind of colorblind. In this instance, I've given him tritanopia (blue-yellow deficient). This would mean that he can make out most reds and some blue, but everything else is muddy at best and grey at worst. This can also be caused (worsened, maybe?) by head injuries. Steve gets knocked around a lot. So there you go.
> 
> As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback.


	5. Challenge Four: Masturbation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-War.

He was beautiful like this.

Chin pressed down into his chest.

Eyes squeezed shut.

Sharp shoulders hunched forward.

Jaw clenched tight—God the way that one muscle moved under his skin!—and lips pressed into a thin line.

Nostrils flared with the effort of dragging in breath and concentration.

They had their own WC. The landlord had at least complied with that part of the law. The bath was still communal, though. Neither one of them was bashful. It wasn’t any different than swimming at the YMCA. Steve strutted defiantly down the hall in his pajama bottoms, slung low on his narrow hips, a towel thrown over his shoulder, daring anyone to give him a sidelong glance—to make a comment about the display of his ribs or hips, the way his back curved, how his shoulder blades jutted out like wings when he moved, the way the moles on his chest and back stood out in stark relief against his skin.

God, he was beautiful.

Usually, he’d wait for Bucky to get home. It must have been a bad day. A painful one. And Steve was too damned polite for his own good to occupy the communal tub for longer than strictly necessary. Bucky would come home in the evening to find Steve curled into a ball in bed—the couch if he couldn’t make it—trying to will away the pain in his joints or feet or back. Bucky would haul him into the bathroom down the hall. He’d help Steve with buttons and clasps that he was too far gone to manage, give him a hand into the tub. Steve would sink down into the water, maintaining the most stoic expression he could muster. He’d soak until the water went cool and all the while fret about apologizing to that sweet nurse in the apartment beside them for hogging the bathroom. “She’s on her feet all day,” he’d insist. “She deserves it as much as I do.” The nurse would tell him later on when they bumped into each other not to worry, she was perfectly capable of kicking him out if she wanted a good soak that desperately.

So it must have been bad, if he couldn’t wait, if he’d found the will to draw a bath himself.

The room was filled with steam even with the broken window that made the stockings hanging on the line to dry wiggle limply in the evening breeze. Bucky bent down to take off his work boots near the door, placing them down as gently as possible. He moved into the space, quiet in socked feet. Steve’s shoulder bumped up and down, paced like the metronome that sat on top of the piano Bucky hated having lessons on as a kid. The old woman who the piano belonged to smelled distinctively of wet dog. He could never say “no;” it was the only payment his mother would accept from the woman for taking her laundry.

The water made soft sloshing sounds against the porcelain tub, gentle waves rippling the surface as Steve’s hand worked below. He let out a strangled sound between ragged breaths. Roses bloomed high on his cheeks. His ears burned red. Chest flushed with blush. The humidity in the room made beads of condensation and sweat stand out on his skin. Bucky had to bite his lip to hold in sound as he tracked a droplet rolling from Steve’s temple down over his cheek.

Eyelashes fluttered.

Head lifted.

Lips parted.

Steve wheezed and tensed as he drew in breath. It rattled in his chest.

His body froze entirely as Bucky touched his shoulder. Broad, rough hand sliding down the slender arm into the water and settling on top of elegant fingers. “Don’t you know how to lock the door, Rogers?” He swiped his thumb slowly over Steve’s tip and settled himself on his knees against the curve of the tub. His nose brushed against the tender skin just behind Steve’s ear as Bucky spoke against his neck, “Why’d ya stop?” He grinned wolfishly as the arm he was cradling trembled and he coaxed Steve’s hand back into movement.

Steve’s head tilted slowly to the side, eyes opening lazily. “Jerk,” he muttered.

Bucky swept damp blonde hair to the side, away from Steve’s forehead. “Punk.” He reveled in the groan he elicited by drawing an earlobe between his teeth.

Steve quickened his pace. Unoccupied hand stroked languidly over tight stomach and chest, fingers pinching and rubbing and they went. His breath rattled harder as he fought for air through gritted teeth. Bucky caught the roaming hand in his, made it glide down under the surface of the water, threading fingers through soft blonde hair. “Ya gotta breathe, dollface.”

Steve opened his mouth in a silent shout. He pressed his toes against the end of the tub, making his hips rise and his back arch, pressing his cock into the persistent and warm tandem strokes of his and Bucky’s hands. His head fell back, pressing almost painfully into Bucky’s shoulder as he shook and continued to stroke until he was spent.

God, he was beautiful.

He lowered his body carefully, boneless in outer and inner warmth. The smile that spread across his lips was slow and sweet, like molasses. Bucky watched a droplet of sweat run along the curve of his nose and drop over the edge. “Feel better?”

“Mmm.”

Steve opened his eyes when Bucky released him, frowning at the loss of contact. He sat up straight, “You got your shirt a little wet.” He smoothed his hands over the soaked sleeves, the white cotton turned see-through and sticking to Bucky’s arms.

“And whose fault is ‘at?” Steve grinned, eyes crinkling at the edges with the expression. “I guess you’ll have ta make it up t’me.” Steve chuckled, the sound low and dark as he leaned forward to pull the drain plug out. Bucky took his hand as he stood and climbed out of the tub.

They gathered Steve’s clothes up off the floor when he was dry, towel wrapped around his sharp hips. They padded quietly down the hall, closing their door only to hear another open and close. Steve smiled bashfully, “I’ll apologize to ‘er in the morning.”

And when he was spread below Bucky, still-damp hair fanned out and sticking up against the pillowcase, all Bucky could think was, _“God, he’s beautiful.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short and sweet...er...smutty?
> 
> ALRIGHT. Historical notes, because _I know_ that's why you all keep coming back.
> 
> By the time Steve and Bucky would have been living on their own, it was illegal for all individual dwellings not to have their own bathrooms/plumbing. Some tenement owners ignored the law, but in most places, houses and apartments were renovated to comply. Drinking water and toilets for the win!
> 
> Also, in the earlier part of the century, it was against the rules to swim in any sort of shots/trunks at the YMCA pools because the fibers from the fabric damaged the filtration systems. So, our boys would have been skinny dipping along with everyone else.
> 
> I also read somewhere recently that orgasms help with asthma symptoms? Due to the hormones/chemicals that are released. Who knew? So there we go. Steve's got a free and pleasant alternative to cigarettes or meds when he's got some privacy.
> 
> As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback.


	6. Challenge Five: Oral Sex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Companion to "First Time" that occurs between the second and third scenes. Post-serum, pre-ice.

“Steve, the guys don’t care.” Bucky had lips that refused to quit. He always had. His mouth never stopped running in all the best and worst ways. “They’ve been callin’ us ‘ma and pop’ fer months. Ya think they care?”

“You two are the reason we’re alive,” Morita had said. “Well, Sarge is the reason we’re alive. And your completely irrational scheme to get him out.” He’d smiled and shook his head. “Do you think any of us care what the hell you two get up to?”

Dernier mumbled something that made Gabe snort. “He said: as long as you’re not suckin’ face when you should be shootin’ at HYDRA, he doesn’t give a shit.”

“Quite seconded,” Falsworth added.

“Buck, _please_ , I—Ah!” That spot just behind his right ear had always been particularly sensitive. Particularly when Bucky was sucking and biting and licking like he was trying to bore a hole right into Steve’s goddamned skull.

They’d been in their tent. As makeshift as it was, since their mission and the terrain they were navigating called for as little extra baggage as possible, it still gave them a relatively dry space to try to rest and clean their weapons. They were stripped down to their tee shirts, methodically disassembling weapons and doing maintenance. At least, _Steve_ was disassembling weapons and doing maintenance. Bucky was doing his best to be the biggest distraction he could possibly be.

It had been six months since Steve jumped from a plane into enemy territory.

Six months since he found Bucky strapped to a table, mumbling his name, rank, and serial number.

Six months since Steve thought he was going to die from the pressure in his chest.

Six months since Bucky had _come back to him_. Stopped pushing him away and pretending there wasn’t anything between them. Stopped pretending they could go back to the way things were before the Photomaton on Steve’s eighteenth birthday.

Six months since Bucky said “I miss you.” Since they’d crashed back together in need and want and anger.

There were moments of darkness. Moments when Bucky was this brooding, angry thing. Distant. When Steve wondered what exactly had gone on in that laboratory that Bucky reused to tell him about, that the rest of the Commandos remained stubbornly close-lipped about. There were endless days when Steve and Bucky circled each other like caged animals with too much left unsaid, too much left unfelt, unexpressed. Days when all Steve wanted to do was scream so he threw himself harder into the fight, punched just a little harder, threw the shield with just a little more force.

And then there were the moments when Bucky was giddy. Flirty. Downright silly. The way he was when they were young and stupid and knew that they had to keep their heads down but didn’t quite understand the enormity of it. Moments when they pretended that the years and the hurt fell away. Moments when they pretended they weren’t just outside enemy lines or waiting for the right moment to infiltrate the next HYDRA base or Axis camp.

Bucky’s fingers—ones that seemed to never come clean anymore, right along with the front of his coat with it’s embedded dirt and grass stains from lying on his stomach and staring through the scope on his rifle—pulled the hem of Steve’s shirt free and wandered around him. Pinching. Scratching. Caressing. Distracting.

Steve let his head fall back against Bucky’s shoulder. He listened to the sound of Bucky’s breathing. Felt Bucky’s chest rise and fall against his back.

“Fuckin’ _jerk_.” Bucky chuckled. Steve could feel his grin. “At least let me finish.”

“Ya got five minutes, punk.”

“You gotta stop.”

Bucky watched him like a hawk, his rifle oiled and reassembled in what Steve was sure was a record time for the 107th and the Commandos. Watched him like a hawk with a villainous curl to the edges of his lips. “Done.” Steve holstered his gun on his thigh and found himself practically thrown out of the tent. “ _Christ,_ keep your pants on! I’m goin’!” Steve shot a look at a laughing Dum Dum.

“Don’t go wanderin’ too far now. When parents’ away the kids’ll play!”

Bucky never looked back, trusting Steve would follow. He studied the curve of Bucky’s shoulders, the taper of his waist, the play of muscle and vein spiraling up forearms and disappearing into the sleeves of the dingy tee shirt, the way the rifle slung across his back bounced against shoulder blade and hip.

Six months had done wonders to put the weight and muscle back onto Bucky’s body, things lost to imprisonment.

He turned to grin over his shoulder, the expression impish even with exhaustion etched over his face.

He stopped abruptly, hand up. Steve waited, fingers resting on the butt of his gun, listening, regretting the absence of the shield. Bucky turned to face him. “Alone.”

Steve couldn’t help but chuckle, relieved that he hadn’t missed some subtle snap of a twig or rustle of underbrush. “Jerk.”

Bucky twisted the front of Steve’s shirt in his grip, pulling him close, lifting his lips to Steve’s ear—the good one, the one that Bucky always whispered in—“Punk.” Steve allowed himself to be backed up against an adjacent tree. Allowed himself to be manhandled. Allowed his breath to be taken away.

Bucky had lips that refused to quit and the only sounds in the space around them were the wet sounds of lips and tongue. The only things filling Steve’s head were the feel of Bucky’s nose sliding against his. The twinge of pain when his bottom lip was caught between teeth. The roughness of the bark at his back. The humidity of the air threatening rain and making his skin slick. Bucky’s fingers pawing at arms and hips and shoulders. Fingernails running up over his stomach. The feel of Bucky’s skin and hair under Steve’s own hands.

It was still strange. Being in the Super Soldier’s body. Being in the Super Soldier’s body and being with Bucky.

Steve longed for nights curled up awkwardly on couch cushions on the floor or a narrow mattress filled out with straw and rags on a rickety frame. Curled up in the warm envelope of Bucky’s arms and legs. How own limbs settled around Bucky. Being pulled into strong arms into a broad chest and feeling the steady and reassuring thud of a heartbeat so much more reliable than his own.

Steve missed the way they fit together. Puzzle pieces. Opposite ends of a magnet.

He hated the fleetingly sad and nostalgic looks Bucky cast in his direction. Hated the feeling it gave him—that something was _wrong_ with him. There were moments that Bucky seemed downright repulsed by the sight of him. That Bucky seemed angry with Steve and angry at the world and it terrified Steve.

And then there were the moments when Bucky was giddy. Flirty. Deliriously silly. The way he was when they were young and stupid and knew that they had to keep their heads down but didn’t quite understand the enormity of it. Moments when Steve pretended that they didn’t spend endless days circling each other like caged animals with too much left unsaid. Pretended that they didn’t shoot venomous barbs at each other in confusion and hurt. Pretended that he could make Bucky understand that even though he didn’t need protection, he still needed _Bucky._

Steve missed his breath being taken away.

***

Bucky was a beautiful thing when he was on his knees.

It didn’t happen too often and it was a feat to imagine it.

Bucky was a study column. He was silence and stealth and strength and goodness molded into man.

He was everything that Steve wanted to be and to possess.

And when he was on his knees, he was beautiful.

Steve allowed himself to be backed up against the kitchen counter. “We’ve got thirty ‘till ma gets off ‘er shift,” he mumbled into the crook of Bucky’s neck. “Think ya’kin manage that?” It was August. It was _disgusting_ outside and worse in the confines of the tiny apartment. But it was the summer of eighteen and first times and exploring and reckless abandon.

“Can you?” Bucky looked down at him, humidity-curled locks falling down across his forehead in pomade-stuck chunks. He smirked and pushed the suspenders off Steve’s shoulders. Steve reached up and raked his fingers though Bucky’s hair, pushing it back into place. Bucky worked Steve’s belt open. “Wanna face that coun’er, doll?” he drawled, his hands moving to palm himself through the fabric of his slacks. It had taken some convincing, but Bucky knew he wouldn’t break Steve.

Steve chuckled. “No.”

“You wanna watch, then?” He moved to grip Steve’s waist, ready to lift him onto the edge of the counter

A wicked smile curled the corners of Steve’s lips. “Wanna watch _you_.” His fingers gripped the collar of Bucky’s shirt, tugged down. Bucky’s lips formed a surprised _O_ in reward for boldness.

He sank to his knees.

***

It was a graceful motion rather than a dead-weight drop. Like water running in a rivulet down the glass of a windowpane.

Bucky’s hands were warm against his stomach. Steve’s toes curled in his boots and he widened his stance, leaning his weight back against the solid bulk of the tree. He closed his eyes, raking his fingers through unwashed hair, pushing it back away from Bucky’s forehead. Those lips spread into a grin as Bucky mouthed at Steve’s cock through the layers of uniform and padding. “Open yer eyes, doll.”

“Fuck,” Steve whispered. Bucky chuckled and wasted no time unfastening Steve’s belts and zippers. His pants slid down over his thighs, catching on his holster.

“No time fer’at.” Steve swallowed a groan when Bucky swiped the flat of tongue up the length of Steve’s quickly hardening shaft. Steve fought to keep his breathing even as a testicle disappeared into the wet heat of Bucky’s mouth and calloused fingers moved up and down at an agonizing pace.

Bucky had lips that refused quit. And he was beautiful when he was on his knees, looking up at Steve through dark eyelashes and biting his bottom lip. “Keep watchin’.” Steve nodded, finding it impossible to make whatever part of his brain that formed speech connect with his mouth.

Bucky’s mouth had no problem connecting. Steve was relieved when he stopped looking up, when he focused on the task of using his tongue like a lathe, never stimulating the same bit of skin for too long, never letting Steve get used to the sensation. When his knees bent and his back scraped against the rough bark of the tree, Bucky settled down further, unhurried and unbothered.

Steve was sucking in breath like he’d been held underwater. Trying to hold off. Trying to make it last. Trying to suck up the quiet of the woods and the smell of damp earth and sort of humid air and the sounds floating up to him from below his navel. “Buck, what—“

He was sputtering and gagging, the muscles in the back of his mouth fluttering and convulsing, cheeks shining and wet, eyes squeezed shut. Steve moved to make him stop, eyes wide as Bucky pressed his nose into Steve’s flesh. Swatting Steve’s hands away, he went still, breath hissing in and out of his nose in a racket, mouth and throat relaxing.

“ _Jesus Christ._ ”

He pulled back slowly, “Nope, just me.” His tongue slid out over his bottom lip, teeth coming down to pinch the red flesh white. “Yer not even close, are ya?” Steve’s cheeks grew warm with blush. Bucky laughed, his lips closing around Steve’s head, tongue flicking over his slit.

He needed to touch. If he didn’t touch then he couldn’t focus on watching, too distracted by figuring out what to do with his hands. It usually ended up this way: with Steve carding his fingers through Bucky’s hair and holding on to his ears for dear life. Bucky would hum his amusement and humor him. He’d get teased for it later. But that was later.

Bucky’s lips glided back and forth, his head moving to meet the subtle movement of Steve’s hips, directed by the gentle push and pull pressure on his ears. Steve was close, his heart pounding in his ears, butterflies surging in his stomach, everything south of that getting tense. Bucky pulled back, lips wrapped just around the flared head, cheeks hollowed, staring up at Steve with intensity that made him shiver, not letting up until Steve felt like his spine had turned to Jell-O.

“C’n I have my ears back?”

Steve tongue seemed to be still unable to form speech. He made a strangled sound and let go. He let himself double over, grounded by the warm weight of Bucky’s cheek against his hip.

Back on his feet, watching Steve tuck himself away, Bucky waggled his eyebrows. “Think that counts fer Frenchie’s rule?” Steve fastened his belt and took a shaky step toward Bucky. He kissed him, open-mouthed and lazy, tasting the salt of himself on Bucky’s lips and tongue.

“What d’you mean?”

“’e said no suckin’ face. ‘e didn’t say no suckin’ other things.”

Steve laughed as they started back toward camp, bumping hips, fingers sliding discretely over hands and forearms. Like _before._ Like the summer of eighteen and first times and exploring and reckless abandon.

But Bucky had lips that refused to quit. “I’m gonna ask ‘im. You know how ta say ‘cock’ in French?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have zero historical/cultural notes. No points of interest. None. Zilch. This was just outright shameless porn and I am hiding in the corner now. The entire thing is Seb Stan's fault. Him and his mouth and that _thing_ he does when he licks his lips. You all know what I'm talking about, don't try to deny it.
> 
>  
> 
> _That thing._
> 
>  
> 
> -fans self- Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback.


	7. Challenge Six: Clothed Getting Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is a good boy and he knows exactly how to push Bucky's buttons.

Steve was an absolute little shit.

And he _knew_ it.

Absolute angel in the presence of any of the important adults in their lives. Soft-spoken and articulate. Gushing about some artistic movement or another that he’d read about. Blushing about the worn state of the hems of his slacks and the charcoal and watercolor stains on the cuffs of his shirts. Beaming at any extra tip for doing work around the house or taking down the laundry. Getting absorbed in long novels and innocently looking up like he was in a daze when someone interrupted his reading. Being apologetic and understanding whenever someone spoke too low or in the worse of his ears because even though people knew he was hard of hearing it was never their fault.

Hardly anyone believed that Steve was the same person who snapped back at teachers and students alike when he felt strongly about something. Same person who got into heated political debates with upperclassmen and people on the bus or the train. The same person who, in spite of his apparent lack of strength, gave Bobby Miller the nastiest shiner Bucky’d ever seen when he told Cora O’Brien she was a curly-headed pig when they were kids. Same person who swore like a sailor and picked fights and tried to start rallies at the docks when he found out how little Bucky was getting paid. Bucky’d told him to shut his big goddamned mouth because he was fifteen at the time and not supposed to be working and was getting cash under the table _thankyouverymuch._

Steve was an absolute little shit.

And he _knew_ it. How did Bucky know he knew it? Because he’d smirk and chuckle to himself whenever anyone told him what a _good boy_ he was. Because he’d swipe at his bloody nose with the back of his hand, sniff and say, “I ‘ad ‘im on the ropes.” Because every time Bucky said, “Steve, _no,_ ” he’d cross his arms and get this look on his face that said, “Steve, _yes,_ ” and Bucky would have to follow him into whatever ridiculous situation he’d gotten himself into—or was throwing himself into.

Steve was an absolute little shit.

And Bucky _knew_ it.

So he shouldn’t have been surprised when he felt long fingers and a warm palm come to a rest on his thigh in the darkness of the picture house after Bucky’s graveyard shift at the Navy Yard ended. He shouldn’t have been surprised when Steve’s hand wandered toward his crotch and started rubbing him through his jeans. He slapped his hand over his mouth to muffle his gasp and glanced toward Steve, just visible in his peripheral vision, and saw the most devious smile he’d ever seen crawl over Steve’s face. He never looked away from the screen, for all the world enthralled by Ginger Rogers as she danced across the floor, while Bucky was in his own private hell.

Not that he necessarily wanted to put a stop to it. No, Steve had talented fingers. He could coax a masterpiece out of a stub of charcoal and the paper wrapping from a grocer’s parcel. He could put all the right strokes in all the right places. It was no different when his hands were on Bucky. But they were in the middle of a picture, dammit, and there were other people around and—

“Shh!”

Steve turned toward Bucky; his brow knitted together, “Yeah, Barnes, quiet.”

Bucky leaned toward Steve and hissed in his ear, “You fuckin’ punk.”

Steve just turned back toward Ginger and grinned, his hand settling back on the armrest between them. Bucky closed his eyes and shifted in his seat and went through the list of Vice Presidents in his head.

_Adams. Jefferson. Burr. Clinton. Gerry. Tompkins. Calhoun..._

Thank God the picture was almost over.

Steve looked up at him innocently enough as he leaned back against their apartment door. “Ya’lright there, Buck?”

“Ya know damned well I ain’t, Rogers.” He could feel the flush on his face. The Vice Presidents hadn’t proven particularly useful to quell the heat in his belly and the friction in his pants. “What was that all about?”

Steve shrugged and crossed his arms. His eyes flicked down to Bucky’s crotch. “I was bored. There’s only so many times you can watch someone do a _kick-ball-change_ before it gets old.”

Bucky crowded him against the door. “So you decided to take it out on me?” His voice was low and serious, belying the sparkle of mischief in his eyes and the smile on his lips. Steve barely opened his mouth to answer when Bucky had covered it with his own. His tongue probed Steve’s mouth, running over teeth and tongue. He cradled Steve’s skull in his hands, thumbs rubbing circles into the space where jaw met ear. Steve was slightly breathless when Bucky pulled away.

“Did—Didn’t see ya com—complainin’.”

“Steve, please. Steve, stop. _Steve._ ” Bucky raised a brow, “I think that qual’fied as complainin’.”

“I stopped, didn’t I?” He drew in air abruptly, the flow of it whistling through his nose when Bucky palmed him through his slacks. “Jerk.”

“Punk.”

They made it as far as the living room floor. Steve laughed as Bucky’s fingers fumbled with the fly of his slacks. “I don’t have time, Buck. Gotta finish that illustrat’n fer the _Eagle._ ” He cried out when Bucky’s hands found his half-hardness. “An’ I got one fer the _Record_ and ah!-nother fer the _Spectator._ ” Bucky silenced Steve with his lips and rolled their bodies over. Steve swayed slightly with the sudden change in position and braced himself with his palms against Bucky’s chest.

Bucky grinned, inwardly proud at Steve’s recent successes at the freelance game and outwardly amused at how easy it was to press his buttons. “Big time newspap’ah-man now? Ya ain’t got ‘nuff room in yer busy schedule fer ya best guy, dollface?” Bucky rolled his hips up and Steve’s mouth dropped open, a smile still lingering at the corners of his lips.

“Maybe I’kin pencil ya in. I’ll make time fer such a dreamboat.”

Bucky snorted in amusement and patted Steve’s hip. When the smaller of the pair leaned up on his knees, Bucky slipped his hands between their bodies to adjust himself. He huffed out a breath of relief and patted Steve’s hip again. He rolled his own hips up, pressed Steve’s down.

Steve was talking. He was babbling about editors and deadlines and how he was going to take Bucky out and paint the town red when he got his checks. It all faded into background noise when those talented hands popped open each button of his fly, when the pressure was relieved and his prick was free to bob and rub against his drawers and Steve’s crotch instead of the confines of the jeans. Steve pressed his hips forward, rocking hard like he was riding Bucky in earnest instead of just rubbing up against him. “I love it when ya wear these,” he groaned out.

Bucky sucked in air and thrust his hips up roughly, “I wear ‘em six days a week, Stevie.”

“Then I love ‘em all six days.” Steve huffed out a laugh and leaned forward, “I like the buttons.” Bucky smirked and pressed his body closer.

***

Steve was a little shit whether he was _actually_ little or not. So it shouldn’t have surprised Bucky when Steve didn’t react.

Carter and Phillips were in front of the map. They were relaying the newest intelligence and outlining the mission parameters that went along with it. The Commandos would have to ship out first thing in the morning in order to intercept the latest shipment of HYDRA weapons; their painfully short leave in London would be cut shorter.

But that didn’t mean that they couldn’t enjoy their last night of freedom.

Bucky moved his hands from the tabletop to his lap, fidgety and anxious to go down to the bar for one last drink, one last spin around the tight floor with whatever dame hadn’t fled to the countryside to escape the threat of bombings. He turned to look at Steve. He was the picture of patience and poise and concentration in his perfectly pressed uniform.

But Bucky knew what he looked like when he wasn’t so poised. He knew what Steve looked like when Bucky called him _Stevie_ and _dollface_ and _baby_. He knew what Steve looked like with his hair a tangled, sweaty mess against a pillow and his face and chest as pink as his lips.

It was funny; everyone here knew how reckless Steve could be. They’d watched him jump out of planes with no chute. They’d watched him storm enemy bases by himself. Jump clear over tanks and toss satchels full of explosives inside. Throw around that obnoxiously painted shield like it was a party trick and take down half a dozen HYDRA agents before it came back to him.

But they didn’t seem to know what an absolute little shit he could be. Because aside from the recklessness and the well-timed sarcastic jokes the Commandos had such a love-hate relationship with, they knew him as this patient, poised, soft-spoken officer who held the attention of a room full of people just by virtue of his presence.

But Bucky knew. So really, he shouldn’t have been surprised when he gripped Steve’s thigh under the table and got no reaction. Or when he stroked his fingers against the hard, muscled flesh and Steve only put his hand under his chin thoughtfully and studied the point on the map that Phillips was indicating. Or when he cupped his palm over Steve’s cock and the Captain’s eyes sparked with humor at the surprisingly dirty joke Carter made about HYDRA’s heads.

Steve drew in a deep breath and shifted in his seat. He sighed heavily and shook his head, “Well, I’m not sure if continuing will actually get us anywhere. I think we could all use a good night’s rest.” The others nodded and shuffled in agreement. Steve cleared his throat and rose from his seat when Bucky moved his hand away. “Oh-six-hundred?” Phillips nodded. No one seemed to notice the casual way the Captain held the folder containing his copy of the intelligence report down in front of his belt.

“Sarge, you comin’?” Morita indicated the rest of the group with a thumb over his shoulder.

Steve was walking off in the opposite direction. He paused and gave Bucky a purposeful look. “I’ll catch up. Order me a bee’ah.”

“Jerk.”

“Punk.” Steve glanced to either side, ensuring no one was around before he crowded Bucky against the brick wall behind a tall shelf stuffed full of files. “Ya gon-ah!” Steve’s leg came up, thigh pressing between Bucky’s and moving subtly back and forth. Laughter filtered across the room, Lorraine was entertaining some officer or another, stalling him while Philips got his eggs counted. “Ya gonna get yer uniform wrinkled, Captain.” Steve shut him up by kissing him.

“And whose fault is that?”

Bucky grinned.

Because Bucky was an absolute little shit when he wanted to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just something quick and dirty and utterly plotless!
> 
> The _Brooklyn NY Daily Eagle_ was a newspaper that ran from the late 1800s through 1955. The _Brooklyn Record_ started in '38 and the _Brooklyn Spectator_ started its run in '33. So, I'm putting the first part of this somewhere in '38-'39. Steve and Bucky are living together on their own, Steve's mother has passed away, but Bucky has not yet been drafted.
> 
> And yes, people wore blue jeans way back then! Mostly factory workers and the like, so I think it makes sense that Bucky would be wearing them to work where there's a possibility of dirt and damage to his clothing. And dear god, yes, a button fly. Because I have a thing for button flies and Bucky. And it happens to be period accurate to boot.
> 
> As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback.


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